independence day.

Danicka

May gives way to June without anyone seeming to notice, and then June surrenders entirely to July. The weather goes from skin-saturatingly warm with balmy evenings to sticky, sweaty days and almost unbearable nights so suddenly that everyone complains. Tourists flock to the streets, take in the French Quarter, never knowing how soon it will all be buried in water and debris, trusting the levees, even though they shouldn't.

Out on the former sugar plantation, summer lays some of the garden to rest while other flowers, native to the region, flourish in the heat and incredible humidity. The fans whirl constantly. Lessons, which occur in the hottest part of the day usually, begin to take place in the basement just so they can all keep cool. Lukas -- and occasionally one or two or all of his packmates -- visit often. He reads anything the tutors or Danicka or Lizzy put in his hands, borrowing milk crates of books to hunch over back at the 'packhouse'. Lizzy learns to swim in the river, courtesy of Giselle.

Danicka visits the packhouse, too, though the long distance between the two places gets aggravating occasionally to both she and her boyfriend. Her boyfriend, the werewolf. Ahroun. Pack alpha. They are painting it in late May, inviting her over, and they make a pizza party of it afterwards, wearing grubby, paint-stained clothes with spots on their faces and arms and in their hair, shoving pizza into their faces. She sleeps over for only the second time that night, crashing out almost as soon as her head hits the pillow, taking up far more space in bed than she should, wearing one of his old shirts. Again.

When she visits, sometimes she brings things for the pack. Little things, though over time they add up to a lot. Here is a new skillet, because the old one was a $10 pos from Walmart and this one is cast iron, already seasoned, ready for anything. There is a stack of new (albeit cheap) towels, because the ones they had were threadbare and they'd lost a lot due to bloodstains. Here is a set of plastic drawers for the bathroom because the four of them have a lot of shit. There is a bag of clothes for Hana that Giselle and Danicka don't need, and a bag of clothes that Rick and Christian don't need, and because she insisted on contributing, a lovely watercolor painting that Lizzy did, simply framed, of the pond and bridge out in front of the house. It's actually quite pretty. The packhouse gets a little nicer, bit by bit, or at least a little more homey. She never brings them money. Everything is just 'I happened to see this and thought of you guys'. Except for the painting. Blame Lizzy for that one.

They go on a few dates. Not a lot, because Lukas doesn't want Danicka always paying for him, and he can't afford much. They keep their dates simple, when they actually Go Out, but they are vital: those dates are some of the only time they get to spend alone, completely alone. They end up making out in a movie theater, sitting way in back, the armrest pushed up and their hands all over each other, struggling to keep their breathing quiet, fighting the urge to let their hands wander lower than each other's waists. They end up making out in Benny's care a few more times, too, before acknowledging that this is very dangerous -- after ending up in the back seat one night, Danicka's warm body under Lukas's heavier one, her shirt pushed up and the cup of her bra tugged down and his mouth on her, their hips grinding together, Danicka whimpering like she does.

They decide that night, when they manage to stop, that maybe they should try not to even start kissing whenever he borrows Benny's car to take her out. Yeah. Good idea.

A repeat of the garden does not happen for ages, because they simply can't get the time alone. Most of the time they see each other, there's other kin or other Garou or mortals milling around and they might want each other, might be dying for each other, but --

his pack is sleeping just a few yards away, or

Lizzy is just across the hall, or

the tourists are glaring at them during that ferry ride, or

they are both walking by one of New Orlean's many fine hotels, holding hands, both of them glancing and Lukas chewing on his lip and Danicka licking hers and their steps hastening past it, hands squeezing each other's, resolved -- for awhile longer, at least.

In the early part of June, though, they get into a fight. It's not their first disagreement or problem or Issue, but they do get into a fight. It is a scorcher, and it happens out in that garden, where they were cuddling and leaning against a tree and trying to be mature and not just maul each other as soon as they were out of anyone else's sight. They end up talking about the time they were apart. She confesses to him, quiet and a little sad, that she went pretty crazy. That she sometimes feels ...not 'dirty' or 'bad', but regretful of the emptiness of it. She admits to him some of the drugs she did and he freaks out a little inside, but stays calm, stays mostly calm, even if he can sense there's more under the surface. Something big. So in the end he takes a breath and tells her to just tell him what's wrong.

A couple of minutes later he can barely even look at her, barely touch her, his mind going dark with thoughts of her and one of those males right over in the house, or Giselle -- god. But Danicka is crying, or trying not to at least, swearing to him it was just this, it wasn't that, please say something. There are no details given, nothing to fill in the blanks. But now he knows. Now he knows that Rick and Christian have both been with her, that Giselle has been with her, that it isn't just nameless, faceless strangers but them, they've been friends. Now he knows.

It is their first fight (though not their last), at least as A Couple, and it is damn near apocalyptic. At one point she snaps at him that this isn't fair, she wasn't his, which only sets him off more, stabs at him, twists like a blade in his chest to remember. They fight about that, too. They fight about how it felt to him, to go from how it was at the Affinia to that letter she wrote. They fight until their voices raise and she is shaking, going silent, watching him with a wariness in his eyes that makes him have to...

simply walk away.

Somehow they survive. And he doesn't kill Rick, or Christian, or Giselle, though things are strained for some time. He stays away from the plantation for awhile after that, unable to face them without wanting to put heads through walls, put his fists through heads, tear everything to fucking pieces. Danicka won't say it was wrong to sleep with them. She says, very quietly during one of the times they are able to talk about it, that it was wrong to keep it from him for so long. She just... couldn't bear the thought that he might not be able to get past it, and that he would walk out of her life.

Somehow, though perhaps not that night and perhaps not until the next time she sleeps in his bed with him, smelling like herself and like the shirt he wore that day, she is still able to whisper miluju te in the darkness, and he is still able to wrap his arms around her, hold her close, and think to himself,

mine.

Even if he has no right.

A few weeks later they manage to get alone together, again. The pack is gone. Rolf decided to stay at the plantation a couple of nights because some of the spirits are seriously unhappy and no one else there can do anything and it's chiminage to the real territory owners to keep them from having to send their own Theurge -- this is not how a Shadow Lord would think of it. If you can't keep and tend your own territory, you lose it. But they are Fangs. They consider it a fair tribute. Hana is actually with a boy. He's a Bone Gnawer kin, of all things, but he's actually got a job, and he told her from the start that he knows it can't go anywhere, he'd be lucky if she even gave him a shot, but he swore, with a sincerity that kinda Did It For Her, that she was the hottest girl he'd ever seen and if she went on one date with him, he would make sure she had a good time.

His uncle is the Butcher. She doesn't learn that until their second date, though. They have a better shot by far than, say, Lizzy has with Rolf, but Hana is happy. They aren't boyfriend-girlfriend, but, y'know. It's nice. It's nice to go out and have fun.

Benny isn't around because he's sulking around the plantation with Rolf, because Rolf really needs someone to keep Lizzy from getting them both in HUGE TROUBLE, but it's hard not to sulk when Giselle sunbathes in a bikini and Rick and Christian never talk about sex or girls or anything.

It took over a month to finagle this. When they stand in the packhouse alone, not quite knowing when Hana will come back, they are suddenly awkward and uncertain, startled by the quiet of the place. So they curl up on the couch and watch television, and stop talking, and

then they aren't awkward anymore, and barely get through twenty-two minutes of programming before they're gasping, wriggling around on the couch. Danicka removes his shirt and licks him, from his lowest rib to his clavicle, her tongue flicking over his nipple and his mind blazing white-hot for a moment. He's trying to get her shorts off, fumbling with the buttons, and it's not the first time he's put his hand in her pants (the first time, she took his hand and showed him how to touch her again, just like she did the first time, even if this time it was through her panties), but she arches and moans and bucks when he touches her just right, and it's addictive, it's mindblowing, and that thin layer of cotton between his fingers and her pussy drives him out of his mind with frustration, because he knows he could get her off like that if she'd just stop stopping him, if he could just stop stopping himself.

They end up grabbing their shed clothes and going to his 'bedroom', tumbling down on the mattress with their mouths barely parting. It's been weeks since they got to do anything but kissing, but grinding through their clothes, and for a moment it seems they might just...go for it. Do 'it'. Go 'all the way'. But Lukas, gasping between kisses, tells her

he wants

he wants to

he wants her to tell him how to

and he really doesn't know any word for it except stuff from pornos, so he shows her, holding her hips down and kissing her neck, her breasts, her stomach, pausing at her underwear, unsure of what to do, or how to do it, or if it's okay, or --

Danicka helps him get her panties off, then, her cheeks flushed with want and her eyes strangely tender. She teaches him how, then, lifting her hips to put a pillow under them, stroking her fingers into his hair, panting out in a rush the first time she whispers just... kiss it

and he does.

The Fourth of July, in New Orleans, is a party. It is too hot to give a fuck about anything. Fireworks go off from dusk til god knows when, dozens of different 'shows' adding their color to the sky over the river and the gulf and the city itself. Danicka and the pack all go out, on her insistence, dressed in as little as is legal and sane, sweating as soon as they walk out the door, hitting parties, hitting clubs, grabbing food from street vendors, watching fireworks, dancing literally in the street.

They get separated sometime in there, the three Shadow Lords from their alpha and his girlfriend, who never ever ever talks about her family. She's got her arms thrown around his neck, dancing with him, her head lolling back, her throat exposed to him, her dress so very thin and her arms so very warm and her laughter so very bright. They've been walking and dancing and sneaking drinks and watching fireworks for hours now and she's lazy-limbed, she's lifting her head and nuzzling up against him and it's one of those nights when he's had about a hundred erections throughout the course of the evening because of her legs, or because of her breasts against his chest, or because of a certain way she sighs and it's been like a week or two since she taught him how to pleasure her with his mouth, working his fingers and his tongue in her until she came, and every time he thinks about it, just... god.

She nuzzles him, smiling, kissing the side of his neck and whispering:

"I wanna fuck you tonight, baby."

Lukas

All the way back in May, they paint the packhouse - invite Danicka and the other kin over, even Rick and Christian, and that's the first time any of them meet Hana's new "friend." And there are raised eyebrows, and meaningful glances between Lukas and Benny, but Hana's so blithe about it all, so unflappable, so utterly unrising to their ribbing that even Benny soon loses interest. And anyway they're all more focused on the painting, and they decide early on that they're not gonna try to do any color scheme or anything like that, just buy a whole bunch of colors, the cheapest and most colorful paints they can find, and just let everyone go nuts.

Which is what happens. And which is how, in the end, Hana ends up with great hot swirls and splashes of red and orange in her corner, and Benny has diaphanous vertical streaks and slashes of cool blue and green and purple, and Lukas - perhaps the most literal-minded than his packmates - puts a sprawling oak up in his corner, all solid wood-brown and dark green, its boughs spreading over half the ceiling. Rolf's corner is the simplest: a great, rich, glowing yellow like a sunburst, very subtly textured and hued. Very happy. And then the rest of the room - the walls, the ceiling, even parts of the floor - are simply fair game for anyone's creativity or lack thereof.

When it's all done, and when Danicka's little additions have crept piece by piece into the packhouse, it starts to feel like a home. Like space they own and breathe in rather than simply exist in.

And Hana, meanwhile, is savvy enough, smart enough, not to immediately start bringing her not-boyfriend along to every pack outing ever. She doles him out in little portions, far apart, until he becomes a natural occurrence, as unremarkable as Lukas and Rolf going to Friday afternoon lessons at the plantation, as unnoteworthy as Benny belting something or other out in the shower every night.

Time passes. May gives way to June, and June to July. Heat rises, suffuses the water, suffuses the air, suffuses the very fabric of the earth. Somewhere in there,

their tempers rise, Lukas and Danicka have their first big first As A Couple and it's bad, it's so bad that afterward he doesn't go to the plantation for weeks; so bad that he can't bear to look at Rick and Christian and Giselle, even Giselle, and he thought she was such an innocent, so bad that he can't bear to look at Danicka, even. Can't look at her without thinking of them, their hands all over her while she wrote him letters telling him everything, everything, everything but this; while she wrote him a letter saying

no, I don't want you.

And now he knows why, doesn't he.

Except - no. That wasn't why. And it takes him weeks to come to this understanding, weeks to get to a point where he could drive out to the plantation again, and even though things are still tense and everyone can sense it he stands politely on the porch and asks to speak to Danicka. And they go out into the garden where they've fought and almost-fucked and fought again, and

they stand there under the shade of the oldest magnolia, the girl leaning her back against the tree, the boy leaning his shoulder; they stand there talking until the sky slowly grows magenta, and violet, and dark.

In the end they come to some sort of understanding. It is not perfect, and it cannot heal the past, but the past doesn't always have to affect the present. The past can simply be the past: not hidden, not buried, not clung to. And so

they move on.

It takes them a month to be alone again. Part of that was the weeks Lukas didn't want to see her, or any of them. Part of that was just the sheer number of people involved, the four packmates, the five kin, and now there's a new boy that sometimes comes around and hangs out with Hana, too, and altogether there are ten schedules to work around and

and somehow it happens, and he lays her out and she shows him how and he's so bad at it at first but she's patient, she teaches him, he learns,

and they survive this, too.

Oh, and it's the fourth of July. Independence Day, which is yet another reason to party in the Big Easy. There are people everywhere, and so many of them are tourists, and not a single one of them sense how close to the end they're getting, how drastically this place will change in a few years' time. The streets are flooded and they get separated. It's all right; they're connected in a way that transcends physical proximity. And through their link Lukas's packmates can feel his distance, can feel that he wants this time alone, to himself, can feel his mind gently closing the channels, softly shutting like doors.

They let him go. And he goes to be with his girlfriend, who his heart calls mine, and they're dancing and sneaking drinks and watching fireworks, and now she's lazy-limbed, she's warm and golden, and Lukas thinks of the drenching golden warmth that Benny painted on his walls; he thinks of the sunlight on the plantation's lawns, and the cool, secret darkness in the shade of the magnolias.

She whispers what she does, and though want is aching in him like a heartbeat, something's different tonight. The summer is upon them, so rich and complete; an alignment of season and stars. He's not so uncertain and fumbling, stumbling over himself in his eagerness. He hears what she says and it sounds like absolute truth, a universal truth on the level of

I AM

or

BE.

He laughs at himself, the turn of his thoughts. He's a little drunk, and so is she, and he nuzzles her back and kisses her temple, kisses the lobe of her ear. There is music. There are crowds. The skies are exploding with light, and he finds her hand with his and takes a step back; starts to lead her away from the thick of it.

There are so many hotels. He knows these streets now; recognizes them with unthinking instinct. He doesn't know quite where he's going, but that's all right. He trusts.

Danicka

Danicka helped with the oak. They talked about it that day, the oak in her back yard. He told her his memory of that party, and the way she fell, and she tells him that she cried when he got punished, it wasn't really his fault. And she wasn't even hurt. She can paint rather well, actually. It's a small talent, an eye for detail and a flow in her wrist, a peacefulness. She worries about the way it looks. It looks like it was painted by two teenagers with no artistic training, but it's his oak.

They paint their totem in the living room, wrapping around the walls, stylized and vibrant and powerful. Rick and Christian paint slashes of 'grass' and water. Lizzy helps Rolf shade his sunburst, so it is not simply flat, unadulterated yellow, but a blending of various pale colors that make it shine. She is the one who can really paint, the one with a tutor and even a little talent. Giselle paints the kitchen, or most of it, in blue and white stripes with little vines detailed here and there, for no real reason at all. There is at least one enormous splash of paint where they just threw it against the wall because they could.

The floor is stained with paint now, too. It's bright in there. It's colorful.

Those weeks that go by between the fight and the reconciliation are not. They are dark, and hateful, and Danicka keeps calling him, leaving him messages. Some are just crying, asking him to please just pick up and talk to her. Some are angry. What the hell does he expect her to do, just sit there til he stops being a jackass? Some, near the end, are even calm, are thought-through, are sad and yet still not apologetic.

We talked about this when you came here, she says softly into his voicemail. Why I wasn't ready to be with you. Because I wasn't, Lukas. I don't think it'd be any better if I'd made myself pretend to be ready and ended up actually like... cheating on you, those three words a weak whisper. That isn't what happened. That isn't what has been happening or will happen. All of that is over, and if you would just talk to me I could tell you why and...

A long, soft sigh. I know you're hurt, and I would never willingly hurt you. But I wish you would stop treating me like I'm... spoiled for you, now.

It isn't long after that that Lukas comes out to the plantation, standing on the door and speaking quietly even though his hands clench behind him when Christian answers the door. She is afraid to see him and eager to see him, wanting to embrace him but afraid of being shoved away. He asks to go talk in the garden, so they go, and she curls up with her knees up and her arms around her legs, expecting this to be it, he's going to stop giving her the silent treatment and just break up with her, and that thought makes her so angry he can almost taste it in the air, but

that isn't what happens. And they do argue again, voices raising, getting to their feet, before they find a bit of peace. She's leaning so tiredly against the tree that he wants to protect her, suddenly, realizes that and realizes how much his spirit still calls her mate, mine, mine, my mate that he could not stop wanting to cherish her even if she broke his heart. And that makes him realize: she didn't break his heart. She gave him her own.

They end up leaning together, her head on his chest, his arms around her, not talking anymore because they can't bear to talk anymore. He needs some time where he's not around the other kin, and she doesn't blame him. She says that's okay. She tells him that Giselle, especially, is her friend now, and she's... not really had many friends in her life. It's hard for him not to ask her to cut them all off, and he knows that's insane, but he admits it, and she understands, and

it isn't perfect, but it's okay. It will be okay.

Frankly, every time they get to go out on a date -- to see a movie, or to get a bite to eat, or just walk somewhere, or go to a museum on a free day -- it gets a little more okay. They hold hands almost constantly, and they are that annoying teenage couple that giggles and hugs and sneaks kisses in dark corners. And sometimes they really get some privacy, even if they're just sitting on a bench along the riverside and it's dark except for a few lamps. And sometimes they get in Benny's car and he leans his seat back or she does hers and they end up mauling each other, hands under clothes, Lukas finding her clit through her panties in the dark and whispering in her ear that he can feel how wet she is, groaning that he wants to be inside of her.

Truth be told, every time he has to take her home after that, he knows he's going to jerk off just so he can breathe again. He doesn't know that Danicka does the same, imagining him playing with her clit, whispering in her ear like that, thinking about him just... fucking her, even if the only time he's ever really talked about S-E-X he calls it making love, like he's afraid of making her feel degraded -- or of degrading what they have between them.

She thinks about that, and she can't help herself but cry out, muffling it in a pillow every time. It's different from every other time she's played with herself, whatever she's thought about. When she thinks about him, she can't help but moan aloud, whimper into her mattress, panting until she comes down.

Tonight, she calls it fucking. She calls him baby, which only started awhile ago, though she used that the first night they were together, which feels like -- well, it's over a year ago now. Forever ago. He's a little drunk; she's just drunk, and also lazily affectionate, nuzzling him and touching him, and he doesn't think twice about it. He takes her hand and starts moving, and Danicka starts laughing, following him, suddenly

and a bit inexplicably,

kinda nervous.

Lukas

Danicka's right; Lukas always calls it making love. He calls it that because he's afraid of making her feel degraded, and because he's afraid of degrading this. He's afraid of making less of this than it is,

which is, in the end, the same reason he was so angry about her and Giselle and Rick and Christian. Not only that he was dumb and blind to it. Not only because some insecure part of him wondered if they talked about him, if they laughed at him, the virgin, practically, the silly boy mooning over this girl he thinks is the epitome of all that is wonderful, who they've all banged, fucked, plowed, did - and those thoughts did go through his head, dark and tortured, but they went away when he realized: they're not like that. Not Giselle, not Christian, not even Rick with the habit of pointing guns like toys.

But the other part of it ran deeper: the fear, the older one, that this just wasn't that important to her. That in the end she's his first and he would be perfectly all right with it if she was also his last, and everyone in between -- all one and a half of them, so far -- made no difference at all. But that in the end he's neither her first nor will be her last, but only one of the many, many, many in between.

That fear took longer to dispel. It took a long talk in the garden, and it look gentle, slow, careful overtures on both side before the wound slowly closed again, healed, became stronger for it.

Now she calls it fucking, and he doesn't try to correct her. He takes her hand; it feels right tonight, so he doesn't argue with himself or the cosmos or any of it. He starts to lead her somewhere and she's laughing, and following, and then

a little nervous, which he feels more than he sees or hears. So he turns back, waits for her to come alongside him, and in the flare of fireworks, in the glow of streetlights and neons and all the colors of Bourbon Street his eyes are clear and pale, looking for hers.

"Jsi v poÅ™ádku?" And he takes both her hands in his, leans down to kiss her; it's slow and warm, the world dropping out of his consciousness for a moment. "Don't be scared," he whispers. "Jsem tady."

Danicka

Tonight she says she wants to fuck him, and he doesn't feel degraded, doesn't feel like this is degraded, isn't thinking anymore about Rick or Christian or Giselle or any of the others, of her first or her in-betweens or if he's really the last or if what she feels for him could ever, ever compare to what he feels for her if she could stand to be with someone else. He isn't walking around with that wound untended and open anymore. Every time he's at the plantation, he gets the same respect and friendship he got before. No one is eyeing Danicka like she doesn't really want to be with him, like they're all making a fool out of him. They like him because Danicka is happy with him. They want Danicka to be happy because they care for her, that simply. And it gets easier, the more he comes to terms with that.

It hints, too, at how little she has truly been happy before. Hints at how even these friends of hers knew she wasn't happy, she wasn't fulfilled, she wasn't finding something deep in herself and she wasn't even finding herself, she was just... floating. Courseless, rudderless, aimless. Bobbing on this wave, sinking below that one.

She calls making love fucking tonight, and he doesn't try to correct her because it feels right, but she's also calling it that because she's intoxicated, because she's horny, because he is -- her brain says, swimmingly -- big and strong and warm and everything will be good when she gets her arms around him, yesss. But he's so certain. He doesn't ask her if she's sure, he doesn't tell her no, they should wait a little longer, what about everything they talked about. He doesn't even say anything at all. He just takes her hand and pulls her with him, like a switch has flicked in his brain and it's time to go, and she doesn't know where he's taking her or what he's thinking and when she's drunk these are all very unnerving things, they are unexpected and she doesn't know what she's doing or what's going on because this time, she's not leading him.

So maybe there's just a little resistance in her footsteps, or a little wariness in her laughter, and Lukas notices it. He pauses, til she's shuffled to him by her feet as well as the crowd thronging the streets. A burst of red and gold go off overhead and gasps and delight ripple through the people around them like they've never seen this before, like it's all somehow new and wonderful. It lights up her face briefly, and slowly fades. She's looking up at him, wondering what he wants to say, when he takes her hands in his. He asks her what's wrong and he kisses her, and for him it's slow and warm and the world just vanishes for a moment, but she's not quite there with him, she's not sure why he's asking her if she's okay and then kissing her right after and when he stops she's looking at him, the wrinkle in the middle of her brow vulnerable as she's ever been with him.

"I don't know," she says, because literally a minute and a half ago she was fine, she was ready, it was right and she wanted very much for him to take her somewhere and --

well, fuck her. And she crumples a little, and because she can't figure out what is wrong now, she takes the lens and turns it away from herself. "You're just acting kind of... weird or something," she says, a little quieter, the last couple of words getting lost in the boom and crack of another set of explosives overhead. She looks down, and he is still big and strong and warm, so she steps forward and curls against his body, laying her head on his chest beside her hands. It's a pretty weak statement, not one of her better dissemblings, like she knows that isn't really what's not-okay, except maybe it is, except maybe something's wrong with her now.

Danicka just closes that distance between them, physically, and waits for his arms to wrap around her, closing her eyes against the noise in the street.

Lukas

What Danicka does then is perhaps unfair. Turning the lens away from herself because she can't define what it is, exactly, she feels. Or why. Turning it on him instead; telling him he's acting weird, and then coming close to him and expecting him to comfort her nonetheless.

Which is what he does. His arms come around her, but he's frowning now, and something in his body and embrace feels a little stiff.

"Weird?" he echoes.

Danicka

Perhaps it's unfair. It is, and she knows it a little, but she's vulnerable, and for her there are no boundaries between a moment of insecurity and a feeling of mounting terror, as though any kind of vulnerability, any at all, is too terrible to contemplate, it is the worst of all possible fates, it is the open gate to panic. For a moment at least, she simply cannot help the urge to lie, to distract, to cast attention anywhere at all as long as it is not on her.

In no lifetime could Lukas understand, intuitively or immediately, how much an act of trust it is for someone like Danicka to feel that panic and instantly seek solace in the arms of someone like him. To feel fear and choose, instead of running away, to curl against his chest and close her eyes and hope that he will hold her, hold her, always hold her, no matter what she says, no matter if she is flawed or damaged or broken, no matter if she is a liar and a slut. She cannot expect him to do this. To hope, to feel even a glimmer of faith that he might --

and yet he does. Even with a frown coming down over his face like a curtain on a brightly lit stage, even as he's stiffening, annoyed or frustrated or put off or what-have-you, his arms close around her and keep her near. She can hear his heartbeat, a heavy thudding going a bit faster -- from drink, from excitement, from the noise of fireworks, she doesn't know. She hopes not anger. She listens, and somehow because it is his, it comforts her, as though it is just another form of his voice, unique and singular in all the world.

She doesn't say anything for a moment, then sighs softly. "We're drunk and partying and... you just grabbed my hand and took off and didn't even say anything, and..."

And, and, and.

Danicka's arms unfold and wrap around his middle as though she's afraid he'll push her away. She swallows so hard he can almost feel it, feel her jaw. She draws back, though her arms remain around him, and she looks up at him. Sparks of purple and blue and white float down from the black sky overhead, shimmering against the surface of her eyes, which turn almost black at night, just like the water. That look is still on her face, her brows tugged together, the corners of her mouth turned downward in sadness and fear.

She swallows again, and then: "I think... I don't want to fuck you," she says quietly, which is insane, which isn't fair, co to kurva, but she isn't finished yet. "I want to be with you," which comes out in a rush, as though she really is afraid he's going to shove her now, shout at her, ask her what the hell her problem is, why she keeps doing this to him. The words just tumble out of her, as though all of them want to be in the air at once, jostling for his attention. "I want to be with you and I only want to be with you. I mean only you. I mean ...ever."

Danicka takes a breath. "And there's so much about me that you don't know --" this time it's red, white, and blue, the fireworks are, and the crowd cheers like they do every time the flag's colors go up, so she holds the words a moment, breathless, "-- bad things and things you might not like and so many things I regret, and I don't want to ask you to be with me like that when you might feel like I tricked you into it, but I don't want to just... get drunk and party and run off and fuck you like that, like it's just another night, like it's been -- before, or like it isn't important. I want... I want to be with you."

She takes a breath, another one, but this time she literally does hold it, exhaling only a second or two later through her nostrils because she's pressing her lips together.

A burst of green fireworks go off. He can see the color of her eyes then, but only for a moment.

Lukas

The truth is he doesn't really understand what she means, or what she wants from him. He hears I don't want to fuck you and his brow furrows. He hears I want to be with you, only you, ever, and fireworks burst in the air and light up his heart. He feels her holding him, holds her back, doesn't understand, though, doesn't know what or how or --

"Baby," he says, quiet, stroking her hair back, touching her face and her shoulders, her back, like this alone could calm her or soothe her somehow, "baby, just tell me what you want me to do. Okay?"

Danicka

Her brow furrows as she looks up at him, her shoulders rounding downward a little as he strokes her. Danicka shakes her head, saying quietly: "I don't know how else to say it. I don't want you to just... do what I tell you I want, Lukas."

Lukas

Lukas's EMPAFEE: 7, 1, 4

Danicka

[She's a little confused at the moment, wondering why he doesn't get what she just poured out. Her sudden discomfort seems to stem from something about what she said about how they were drunk and partying and not wanting to just run off and fuck.]

Lukas

In another lifetime, there were - will be - moments like this too. Moments where he's caught up and fervent and driven, so focused on being with her that he forgets to be with her. Moments when she lays her hand on the side of his face and whispers, tender as a caress,

stop, Lukasek.

Moments when she touches him to bring him back to her. Moments when - caught between the wall and his scorching skin, caught in the instant between when they are separate entities and when they are physically joined - she wraps her hand back behind his neck and reminds him without words to remember her, be with her, know her and recognize her and not forget her.

He doesn't quite understand this yet, though. He looks at her and she seems so uneasy in her skin now, telling him she doesn't just want to fuck, doesn't want this to be like every other time, and gradually his arms unwrap from around her and his hands find hers, hold her hands. They drift a few inches apart and he looks at their linked fingers.

"Maybe," he says hesitantly, "we can go somewhere and ... you can tell me anything else you feel like you need to." He doesn't get it. He's missing the point, he's sure of it, but he can't imagine whatever else she might want or need. "And if you don't want to have sex tonight it's okay."

Danicka

She doesn't feel caught right now, not assaulted by his fervency. He's never yet made her feel that way, likely because from the beginning he's been all too aware of his own rage, of his own intensity, of his own thought that she could never ever want as badly as he does, need as much as he does. He holds himself back for her, time and again, never wanting to press her, abuse her, forget her. It will take him time to begin to let go. He'll have to learn to trust her strength, and learn to trust his own love for her, believe that even if he lets go, he won't hurt her, he won't treat her badly, he won't treat her like she is just another girl and this is just another night.

Danicka watches him as he takes her hands in his own. There's something ritualistic about the gesture, and she looks from his hands to his eyes again as fireworks burst overhead and patriotic music swells somewhere, as rock and roll bursts out somewhere else, as trumpets go off in some jazz club down the street. It's a din. They are not a quiet, still point in the universe, though, their hearts racing along with the whole city's pulse around them.

His eyes or his tone or his words make her ache. Her head tips gently to one side, watching him as he tells her it's okay if she doesn't want it tonight, if she thought she was ready but she's not, if -- whatever is wrong is still wrong. She licks her lips and holds his hands in return.

"I want to make love to you," she says, just barely loud enough for him to hear her in the midst of all this celebratory chaos. "And I want us to ...be together," she also says, like the Real Words for what she means are still too scary to say aloud, too big for her to hold. "I'm just afraid because there's so much about me you still don't know, and... I'm not as afraid that you'll leave me when you find out, but it feels wrong to be with you like that --"

like that. like sex. like something more than sex. like the sort of sex that even that first night at the Affinia wasn't, not really.

"-- when you don't know." She takes a breath. "I want you... so much, Lukas. But if we went and had sex and there's all this stuff hanging over my head it'll feel like..."

explosions go off, red and purple and green,

"...like I'm treating you like any other person. Like you're just a boyfriend or someone I'm dating and not... not muj lodni dustojnik," she finishes, the last words barely a whisper, read from her lips underneath the noise around them.

Lukas

Lukas's brow furrows suddenly and achingly as those three words leave her mouth. Somehow even when she said she loved him it didn't strike him so starkly as this. It didn't feel so absolute, and amazing, and unbelievable.

"Lodni dustojnik?" he repeats, soft, almost as though he can't quite believe it.

Danicka

All she can do is look at him. The words are big, and scary, and seem impossible -- that they could be here. French Quarter, Independence Day, with him in jeans and a t-shirt and her in some simple, sleeveless sundress, both of them sweaty, surrounded by noise and color and jostled occasionally by passerby.

Danicka stares at him, all but holding her breath, her heart pounding as if she'd just run a mile, snapping teeth behind her. She isn't frightened of him rejecting her, or running from her -- she isn't frightened of that in the slightest. But she is, in fact, very scared. Terrified...and yet, all the same, unable and unwilling to deny that this is what she wants.

Lukas

So they're both silent, frightened, terrified of the enormity of those words. And he's staring at her and she's staring at him and when the fireworks explode overhead her face is dazzling, the colors flaring in her eyes. Blue and purple and red and green. In another life he saw her like this, lit by otherworldly hues, after they'd broken up and broken each other and found each other again, and they were surrounded by noise and music and crowds then, too. Came together, went to the bathrooms where she tried to fuck him because

it always made them feel so close, it always replaced what words could no longer say.

He's still holding her hands when he leans down to her. His brow touches hers. He's still not quite as tall as he will be, but he's taller now than he was at the beginning of summer, and taller then than he was in the spring. He has to bend a long way to her now, but that warmth between them is still the same. He kisses her softly, slowly, and then lingers, breathing.

"Let's go somewhere," he murmurs. "And if there are things you need to tell me, you can tell me. But Danicka... I know you. Maybe not what you've done or what's been done to you, but... you. I know you."

Danicka

They may never know a night like that one. He would not recognize himself in that lifetime, would not understand how he could be so cold, how he could resist her if she were right in front of him, opening herself up to him, asking him to please just fuck her as though it would heal something in her, or mend something between them. Danicka would look back, before that night, and understand all too well why she'd push him away, would understand all too easily why she would retaliate like a cornered cat if he tried a little too hard, or all at once, to understand her.

In a way, she is afraid of him rejecting her. But more, she is afraid of breaking his heart. It broke a little when she told him about her mother, she could feel it in him as he held her in her bed. It broke, nearly shattered, when she told him about the sex and the strangers and the drugs. She felt like she'd ruined some picture of herself for him, become less in his eyes, was now a broken, damaged thing that he had to tend to and care for instead of love. She was afraid, when he came back, that he would look at her like that.

He didn't. And now they're here, together, holding one another's hands, unable to speak and half-afraid to breathe, because she is saying she wants to be with him. Not a girl he's dating. Not his girlfriend. She wants them to be mates.

Neither of them are old enough to legally drink; neither of them is stranger to drink and nightclubs. Lukas isn't even old enough to vote. They are, by far, not old enough to be talking about mating, about Forever, about Til Death. They aren't grown-up enough to use those words. In the eyes of the Nation and even the eyes of her father's family line, fine, yes. He is a Cliath, named and already Alpha of a pack that is doing pretty well for itself. She is nineteen years old now, she has some money, she's healthy and young and fertile and there is no reason to waste time. But at the same time...

he's seventeen. She's nineteen. And now they're talking about something that means forever.

Danicka closes her eyes when his brow touches hers, breathing softly. He kisses her, and she kisses him back, trembling a little, barely felt in his hands. She nods as he's parting and murmuring, her mind focusing on his words despite all the loudness around them, the burst and crack of fireworks, the cheers of people not six, four, two feet away. Her eyes slowly open and find his. She nods again. Their hands lower, and one pair parts, til they walk side by side, hand in hand, down the street and back towards his packhouse.

She doesn't want to go to a hotel.

So they end up going upstairs to that brightly-painted expanse, and Hana and Rolf and Benny are still out, so it's dim and quiet but for the city's light and the moonlight and the fireworks brimming in through the windows. They grab a blanket and they grab some water and slip out of their shoes, crawling out onto the so-called 'balcony', sitting together and watching the fireworks from several stories up, Danicka tucking herself under his arm, against his side. It's quieter here. They can hear the city's party still, but it's dulled by distance, and even the boom of the firecrackers doesn't interrupt their breathing anymore.

He's waiting on her, really, to talk. And she's quiet, slowly sobering, til after awhile she finds the courage to say it, the willingness to start this.

"A few years ago," she says quietly, scratching a little at the label on her bottle of water, "I, uh... I had this friend. Another kinfolk. He was my best friend."

So that story comes out. How she finally found someone she could talk to. How they hung out all through freshman year and sophomore year and how he was there for her when her mother died, and how he understood when no one else she knew could. How he was the kind of friend who got her to actually play with computers and how he'd get books for her from the library and she'd go over and read at his house and he'd just leave her alone to read if she wanted, and he never asked why she didn't just read at home --

they skate over something there, as Danicka talks quietly to Lukas on the rooftop. Some reason behind the books and needing to go to a friend's house, but she doesn't interrupt herself to explain.

-- but then he'd start reading with her, and that was when they started getting close. Like... close, Danicka tells Lukas now, so very softly, even though her brow is tightly furrowed and her eyes are on the water bottle she's holding. She swallows and she keeps going, tells him that this Stephen kid was who she lost her virginity to, and that is as much detail as she puts into that part of the story, because the point of the story is this:

"And later that summer, when I was... when I'd just turned sixteen, I...um." She swallows, and she breathes, but these things don't make it easier to talk about, don't make the label re-appear on the bottle so that she can pick it off again. There are tears in her throat, but not her eyes. Not yet. "I got pregnant."

Lukas

They are not, by all rights, old enough to use words like mate and love and forever. But then, they're not old enough for so many things they do, and have to do. She's not old enough to have carried and lost a baby already. He's not old enough to have to shoulder responsibility, to lead his friends in matters of war and death.

But they do these things. And in the same world where they are expected to do these things, they are more than old enough to speak of mateship, and forever, and devotion.

In that world, though, the word love is a rarer beast. It's so very rarely spoken at all.

So later they sit out on his 'balcony', and it's so warm outside that they don't need to huddle together for warmth. They sit side by side anyway, leaning against the outer wall, his arm around her, her body against his. And she picks at the label on her bottle of water, that motion transferred from her slim hands to her thin shoulders, and from there to his much more solid side.

I lost my virginity, she tells him, and he's looking at her hands, and he takes a small breath. I got pregnant, she tells him. He looks at her that time, her profile, the fall of her hair.

"You don't have a baby," he says quietly. In a way, he's prompting her, as gently as he can, to give him the rest of that dark story.

Danicka

It feels hard, getting it all out like this. All these things she has to tell him are connected and interwoven, and they are all awful. She does not want to tell him her life story. She doesn't want to purge all this at once, but she can't wait a year or two or more down the line for him to know everything about her, for him to understand that there are all these dark spots, all these old wounds. She does not want him to see her as covered in pestilence, either. Sometimes that is how she feels.

Danicka shakes her head at the prompt. No. She doesn't have a baby -- and it is, in a way, good that she confirms this. Good that she doesn't tell him actually, yes, I do. It's home with my father, he's raising it for me because I have to work. It's possible. Not likely, but it's possible. She shakes her head, though.

"I miscarried just a few months into it," she says. "It wasn't very long after I found out, even. I only... knew I was pregnant for about a week."

There is more. And so they are both silent, waiting for Danicka to be able to tell him what the 'more' is. She exhales. "The thing is, I don't really know why I miscarried. Cuz there could be two big reasons," she says, staring now at the label-less plastic bottle she's holding. "One is... that I've always been kinda skinny. It's not like I diet or work out too much or starve myself or whatever, I just... when I get stressed out I just lose my appetite, and then if I force myself to eat I just feel sick and even more stressed out and then I have even less of an appetite, so... most of my life I've been a little bit on the stick-figure side."

She looks unhappy about this. She does not look proud of herself, proud of her body, proud of her ability to go with a half-empty stomach, happy about how she's a size two or zero or whatever the hell is the current unattainable goal. She doesn't hate her body, or look at her lean legs or slender arms in the mirror and feel disgust, but sometimes there is sadness. Sometimes there is confusion. She knows enough now about child development to know about the production of fat cells in childhood and so on, which only makes the basic explanation for her anxiety and her physical limitation all the more sensible, but still: that it is sensible is, itself, sad.

"So I may have lost the baby anyway, just because... I wasn't healthy enough to carry it," she says, very quietly. Far off in the distance, roses of red and white erupt into the sky. "But... my brother also beat me."

There's a pause there, and she's quite still now, lost in that memory in a way, not even shivering now. And what she says next makes it worse:

"That time was probably the worst."

Lukas

Danicka is not broken. She is not broken, but she does carry wounds; scars that are only now beginning to heal. If she didn't, she wouldn't have said it this way - as though there was a chance that the savage beatings her brother gave her, the ones that nearly killed her sometimes, had nothing to do with her body's inability to carry a child to term.

But she does say it like that. And Lukas is so angry at this faceless brother of hers; so angry, but beyond that and beneath that and all through that, so sad, so very sad. "Oh Danicka," he says, choked, his arms wrapping sudden and tight around her, anchoring her to his side as though somehow, like this, years after the fact, he could protect her. "Baby, I didn't know. I ... wondered, but I didn't know."

Danicka

"I didn't expect you to," she tells him, looking at him suddenly when he wraps her up like that. She sounds startled, almost, like for a moment or two she had forgotten he was there, or that she was afraid of what he would hear. He was simply warm and solid and close and she could trust that, because he was so... still. Just heart beating, arm holding, patiently listening.

She says he beat her, and that the time when she was pregnant was the worst, and ...it was bad enough that it might be the reason she miscarried. Then again, if she was already young and fragile and unhealthy, it wouldn't have to be that bad of a beating, that early in a pregnancy, to make her body suddenly inhospitable to offspring. The right blow in the right place, just hard enough, would do it. Her own panic would do it.

But one single blow, or a couple, is not quite the same as a beating. She didn't say he 'hit' her. She says it was the worst time. It means there were other times.

Several times.

Danicka swallows, tensing in his arms, thought not because of him. Hard to tell the difference though, at least from his perspective. She moves a little, loosening his arms, but stays close. She leans against him still, but pulls away some, telling him without words: not so tight. not right now. please.

"He's... not good," she says quietly, her brow so tightly wrinkled now. "I think when we were kids he was trying to protect me, but... he got weirdly possessive as we got older. He's a Fostern now, and he's a lot older than I am, but especially after our mother died and he became our guardian in the Nation, it's like... he owns me. And sometimes the way he's looked at me, or talked to me, it's just... it isn't right."

Lukas

It makes Lukas's skin crawl to hear her say that. She doesn't want to be held so tightly right now, and that hurts too. His arm loosens from around her. A moment later he simply wraps his arms around himself, hugs himself as tightly as he wants to hug her, the contact between them more pressure and proximity than embrace. The outside of his shoulder to hers. The line of his side against the outside of her arm.

He looks miserable, and angry, whatever joy of the earlier evening gone. He takes a breath, then another. Looks at her again.

"Do you want me to ... do something about him? Or for you?"

Danicka

She stops him. When Lukas withdraws his arms completely from around her, pulling them back to himself, she frowns. She stops him, her hands gentle on his forearms, and pulls him back. Wraps him, albeit more softly, around herself, and leans against his chest again, under his arm. Safe, in a sense. She doesn't let him go completely away. Just... not so tight as he wanted to hold her. Wants to hold her.

Danicka's arm rests along his middle, then, and she says, her voice low: "I didn't want you to let go. I just want to ...be able to feel that I can move. But I want you to hold me."

She doesn't know that what she's asking for is a good descriptor of their entire relationship, in this lifetime, in another lifetime. She doesn't realize that what she asks for him to do right here, this moment, is what she has always wanted from him, and what she doesn't dare let herself believe he's capable of. He's Garou. He is a Shadow Lord Ahroun. The only way to be with him is to never quite let him have her, own her, hold her as tightly as he will inevitably want to -- she thinks. And yet she doesn't want him to go away. Doesn't want him to let go of her.

So this is her compromise, here and now, in the literal sense: to hold her, but hold her gently. Warm and close, but not so tight that she becomes afraid that he won't let her move, afraid that he'll clamp down his hands or that she won't able to breathe.

And then, she holds him, too. He's miserable, and angry, but she's finally starting to relax a little, because all that horror isn't just waiting to be said. He's hearing it, and his heart is breaking for it, but he isn't running. He isn't broken. He isn't looking at her with revulsion.

Danicka turns her head to look at him when he says that. Watches him silently for a moment, as though she's reading his mind. As though she can see all the things he wants to do. Is capable of doing. Could do to her brother, still a relatively new Fostern, a slow burn of an ascent through the ranks, carefully gathering dozens of favors as a Cliath, as not-a-threat, before challenging an older Theurge. He is not powerful enough yet that he could really hurt Lukas. Even if he could, he'd have to be prepared. He'd have to know it was coming, have his pack with him.p>

Or else it would be over in seconds.

She takes a shallow, ragged breath. She gives a small shake of her head, exhaling. "You don't need to do anything to him," she whispers. "I just want you to know that... this is where I come from. This is all... why I'm like this. My mother, and my mother's death. My brother. Getting pregnant and losing it. All of it is... why things between us are so hard sometimes."

Lukas

The truth is, Lukas wasn't thinking of some backalley ambush, some beating or assassination. Even now, even like this, he thinks of honorable challenge. He thinks of calling Danicka's nameless, faceless brother out. Making him face what he's done. Making him face it, and pay for it; make him sorry for it.

Perhaps he doesn't know how impossible that would be. He doesn't know that, given the chance to prepare, Vladislav would find a way to win. And he doesn't know that Vladislav may never, ever be able to feel anything close to remorse or sorrow for what he did to Danicka. That would require far too much self-awareness. That would require that Vladislav first realize that what he did -- what he is -- is broken, and wrong, and twisted.

So perhaps it's better that Danicka does not ask for vengeance, or anything of the sort, even if it frustrates him and leaves him feeling inept, useless. She just wants him to know. To not have that between them anymore.

"Okay," he says after a long time, quiet. "I know now. And it makes me want to... it makes me so angry. But ... Danicka, I don't think this - any of this - is why you are the way you are. I mean, I know all these things in your past have changed you and shaped you, maybe even hurt you. But they don't really define you."

He shrugs a little, shoulder and side moving against her. And his free hand tugs restlessly at his shoelaces, picks a thread off the scuffed edge of his jeans.

"You're just you," he says. "To me, anyway. And ... I guess what I'm trying to say is, you don't have to be so ... scared that finding these things out will somehow change you for me. Or make me see you differently.

"They don't. I love you. I hate that these things happened to you, and I might even hate some of the things you did. But I love you."

Danicka

In the home Lukas grew up in, he was spanked occasionally. A quick smattering of slaps against his backside when he was little, just to remind him who was in charge and bring him in line. It probably feels, even now, like it happened more often than it did, but the truth is: his father rarely struck him, his mother even less. There was usually no need, and he was not a bad boy -- exuberant, yes, but he knew when to smarten up and use his manners and stop pestering his sister. By the time he hit an age when he might have rebelled, he was gone. They knew he was Garou and he was taken out of that household, and he didn't dare backtalk any of the werewolves.

He's taken a beating or eighty, but it was sparring, usually not discipline. He was a very disciplined young cub, took to it like a baby to water. And within the sept he was fostered in, kin were kept reasonably separate. They were mates and occasionally children, but he rarely saw them and they rarely saw him. He saw how Istok and his packmates treated his kin, but he also saw how some other Shadow Lords treated theirs.

The plain fact of the matter is, he could call Vladislav out. He could expose him, say he beat his kin, and there are several Shadow Lords who would indeed raise their eyebrows.

But not at the Theurge.

They are a brutal tribe, and their kin are there, by and large, to be useful to the tribe, punished or culled if not. There are older bloodlines and traditions that are not this way, but many are. Many are harsh, and have pared their tribe down to what is necessary to win the war and what is not. Lukas is an optimist; he can not and does not believe that the sort of Garou he has become is the minority. What he can grasp, however, is that a brother who could beat his pregnant, younger sister to the point of miscarriage, who could beat her repeatedly throughout her life, perhaps is incapable of seeing how wrong this is. That if he could see how wrong it was, he would have stopped. Or at least not done it again.

Danicka hears his anger and she doesn't flinch from it, but he can sense that it's hard for her to be near it, even now. She has that instinctive fear of his rage that all humans have, that even some kin have. She is not so brave as she would like. She would like to be fearless of him, for his sake, so that he would not have to see her flinch or startle. But they all have things they wish were different. Everyone does.

She reaches over and covers his fidgeting hand. She doesn't stop him from tugging at that lace or yanking at that string. She just touches the back of his hand while he does so, just to be close. Just to let him know she's there with him. And he talks, and she

believes him.

"Thank you," she says softly.

Lukas

Lukas's hand stills when Danicka's covers it. His fingers open for hers, and when they thread through he turns and kisses her temple.

They're still so young. He's still young enough, inexperienced enough, to think of things so very simplistically. He doesn't like her shampoo or her body spray or whatever else it might be; he likes the way she smells. He doesn't like her pumps or her flats or whatever else she might wear; he likes how her legs look long in these shoes, and how she looks fun in those. He thinks if he just dragged all of Vladislav's perversions out into the light, everyone else will be just as shocked and disgusted as he is. He thinks everyone else will be just like him, and would never dream of hurting his family like that; could never dream of hurting Danicka like that.

The truth is, a disheartening proportion of Shadow Lords wouldn't care. A smaller, but perhaps more insidious proportion would find it well and proper. Kinfolk are not, after all, equals in the eyes of Thunder.

They don't have to think of that, though. In many ways, New Orleans is a refuge for both of them. There aren't many Shadow Lords here. Their tribe tends to gather in blizzard-swept mountains - or farther south still, in tropical climes where storms rage daily for seasons on end. And there's no Caern here either, no Sept except for a ragtag bunch of mostly-Gnawers whose nieces and nephews, kin and kind are still allowed to mix freely. There's that boy Hana keeps bringing around, for one, so often these days that even Benny has grown tired of mocking her for it.

So: here, in the safety of their rundown, brightly-painted den, they sit together and hold hands. He tells her he loves her, and that everything else couldn't change that. She believes him. She thanks him, and he kisses her face, and then for a while they just sit there, watching the now-distant fireworks spiral up over the edge of the roof.

Lukas still feels like maybe he should say something more. Validate what she's told him. Express something of the disgust and horror he feels towards her brother. The words jumble and tangle, though. He has trouble forming them. At length he simply says:

"What your brother did to you was wrong. And unforgivable. But they don't make you lesser, or weaker, or anything like that. Even if he tried to make you feel like that. Okay?" He has a way of saying that word of his: gentle, questioning. "It's okay if you don't want to talk about this anymore. But ... I just wanted to say that, too."

Danicka

There is another lifetime out there, another path taken, where that girl on the street in Manhattan never turned around, or he never called out to her to begin with. He never made that connection, impossibly and shockingly deep, with someone who was Precious but Lesser in the eyes of the tribe. He never fell, at a young age and with startling speed, in love. He grew older and colder, he withdrew from other Shadow Lords, he withdrew from Kin, he joined the Unbroken Circle and did not take leadership of his own pack til well into his twenties.

How he is now, who he is now, is the result of a million tiny choices, day by day, hour by hour, but if one were to look back, one could say it started with her. She changed him. Without trying, without meaning to, without knowing she was, she altered his life forever. And he altered hers.

So now they sit here, and he is not telling her that if he ever hits her it will be discipline and not loss of temper, he is not angry whenever she laughs, thinking it's at his expense. He is not even crawling toward her on the bed, seeing her eyes take in the moonlight, and murmuring that it's okay, don't think about that, before he makes love to her.

They are quiet for awhile, and Danicka urges him to lay back on the blanket, then curls up beside him, taking in his warmth despite the heat of the night around them. She can feel the words churning around in him, wanting to form, but she doesn't ask him what he's thinking. She waits, content to simply lie there, even if he never speaks, even if he never finds a way to express what's inside of him right now. She is exhausted by words, worn out by the dredge of pulling up all of her own demons and exposing them to the light of Lukas's eyes.

He does speak, though. While she curls up along his side, her hand on his chest, her feet resting by his leg, he finds the words he wants.

That was wrong. That was not okay.

But you are. You are okay.

Okay?

She nods into his chest; she understands. And it is something he did need to say, and something she needed to hear, but she can't tell him that right now. She's a desert of language. Danicka holds him where they lie, watching the fireworks, how every spark becomes a varicolored star.

Lukas

Lukas is happy to lie back. In this lifetime he has a lot of friends. He didn't wait until he was nearly twenty to even join a pack. He didn't wait until his mid-twenties to really form bonds beyond Duty and Business; didn't wait until then to really make friends. He's known Benny and Hana and Rolf for years. He's getting to know Danicka and Giselle and Lizzy, and even Rick and Christian, better and better.

He doesn't even quite remember how lonely he was that night on the street in New York City. He can't imagine what it would be like to not have these bonds, these ties, these friendships. He's so blessed with them, so rife, that sometimes -

times like this,

he's glad he has some time alone. He's glad they're out in the city and away from here and he's alone with his girlfriend, who is curled against his side, telling him secrets that can't hurt them anymore. Her arms are wrapped around him. He covers her forearm with his palm, thinking that she's thin, she's too thin, he should feed her more, yes, hunt down prey and drag it home and then mate can eat and all will be well.

Okay?
Okay.

"Do you think you'll work for the Sokolovs for the rest of your life?" he whispers.

Danicka

He's always trying to feed her more already. They go out to get bourbon chicken or brisket or what-have-you and he nudges his plate toward her every time, trying to urge her to taste what's before him. He does not do this with his pack, couldn't even if the desire was there. He is their Alpha, and he eats before all. But with Danicka, he wants to make sure she's had her fill before him. He treats her, always, the way a wolf might treat a cub-bearing mate, constantly feeding her ravenous appetite so that the pups will be strong.

Except Danicka isn't pregnant, has no cubs coming, and he hasn't done the right things yet, no, he hasn't mounted mate and filled her up, he hasn't, and that's because she hasn't rolled over or arched her back for him yet, so he waits. And there are no cubs. But he feeds her still. Human and lupine instinct cross paths, tangle together.

She rubs her foot against his jeans, scratching some itch or simply working up greater contact through friction. Her eyes are closed. Her hand is quiet on his chest. He is thinking about taking care of her, keeping her warm, making her strong with lots of meat. But that isn't what he asks about. He asks her about another form of sustenance.

Danicka opens one eye for a moment, quirking, then closes it again as she shakes her head. "No. They only have the one child. Lizzy is already betrothed. In a few years she'll go to college, but just for a year or two, probably. When she's about twenty she'll be married. They won't need me when she's sixteen or seventeen years old. There will be a severance package for me, I'm not sure how much, on top of what I've saved and all that. And then..."

She presses her lips together. "I think my brother's plan is for me to be mated after that, because I'll have money and reputation and everything. I think he thinks it will help a Garou want me. Most of them don't like how easily scared I am. Shadow Lords abhor weakness," she adds, these last four words very dry.

Lukas

But she's not weak, he wants to protest. He knows she doesn't mean it when she says it. But the same instinct that makes him want to feed her makes him want to protect her, and she can feel it in the way his arm tightens a little; in how he nuzzles her warm and firm.

"What about what you want?" he asks quietly. "I mean... your plans?"

Danicka

Not so long ago, she would have said she'd never really thought about it, and left it at that. Why waste her time imagining a fake future? Why torture herself making plans that would never come to fruition? She is too realistic. She is too stern with life. She is too hard, for one who looks so soft.

But with him, here and now, knowing he loves her, she pauses. She has fought with him beneath magnolias where she also caressed him, and no plan she's ever made or tried not to imagine would have permitted either. They lay out on a rooftop balcony and watch fireworks on a day dedicated to the celebration of freedom, and she -- for once -- indentifies with and understands the sentiment.

So, quietly, Danicka thinks about this inherently dangerous, downright impossible question. She strokes his chest idly and hypnotically, considering it as he rubs his face against her brow, getting her scent on him, getting his scent on her.

"I want to go to college," she says softly. "I think I'm smart enough to go. I don't even know what I'd study, but... well, I like math. And science. And computers." She's quiet a moment then, thinking of more. "I want to visit the Czech Republic and meet my half-sisters and their children, and see where my family comes from. I want to get my own car, and my own apartment, and... maybe a cat."

All that hangs for a moment. She's still holding him, resting with him, and whispers: "And I meant what I said earlier. I want to be with you. Just like this, like we are now. Together, but... not because we belong to each other or we own each other." Danicka is looking at the stars past his breathing. "I want to belong to myself," she says, and it sums up

everything. Everything she just said. Every time she's resisted him or pulled away or asked for innocence or said yes but no but yes. Every plan and dream she's never allowed herself. Everything she wants begins there, is only truly good or desirable if it comes from there.

"I want to belong to myself, and be with you," she finishes, still so very soft.

Lukas

Belong to myself. Be with you.

Of all the times they've spoken of this, discussed this, touched on this very subject, this is perhaps the clearest and most intuitive understanding Lukas has of what she means. And it's different, to be truthful, from how an animal like him might understand mateship. He would have defined it as belonging with one another, and to one another. Her way makes sense too, though. And it's not, he thinks, any shallower or less than what he wants.

"I think you should go to college," he whispers. "I wish I could go. I don't know about the cat," a brief-coursing smile, "but if you get your own place you should have it close to mine so we can visit, and stuff.

"Do you think you might stay in New Orleans after Lizzy's off to college?"

Danicka

She is different than many people around her. The list of things that have indented her personality from childhood is long, and there are shadows like bruises here and there, spots she doesn't even know are sore until they are pressed -- and she has been taught to press her lips together against pain. To smile when she is sad, or when it hurts. To survive by ignoring the sprains and the fractures in what should have been... and what she actually knew.

Ultimately, Danicka is a far more solitary creature than many within the Nation, Garou or otherwise. Intimate connections with others are few and far between. Shallower connections are everywhere, one more way of keeping people at a distance so she does not break them, or taint them, or scare them with what has been done to her. She describes a life that seems so alone: to study things that do not really require much socialization. To live on her own, to own her own things, to acquire one of the more independent sorts of pets imaginable. Without the last few sentences, one would think that is all she wants, is this very deep, yet very solitary, life of her own.

Of course she wants to belong to herself. She wants to be free. She wants to be allowed to say no, and to leave if she likes, and do all the things that most people take for granted. Yet: she wants him. And he is Garou. He is a Shadow Lord, moreover, and they are not given to allowing their kin much freedom. Take what you can win. Hold what you can keep. He has not understood, til now, what she's always been seeking, why the messages have always been so mixed. Now, though, it seems so crystalline, so perfect, so intuitive.

She smiles a little. They have skated past the words about mateship since standing on the street when she first said them and he first echoed them back, and they skirt them now, because there are hard and fast rules about these things. There are rituals.

"I don't know," she tells him, backing away from these still-imaginary futures that may yet be, that she still thinks highly unlikely and not worth dwelling on. They could just go on and on about it, couldn't they? Let's do this and we could do this and I can't wait to -- with you, but that doesn't make any of it real. Wanting something emotionally doesn't translate into action. And if it doesn't, the emotion is pretty thin, isn't it?

"I don't think they'll leave us in New Orleans indefinitely anyway," she says. "It's been almost two years since 9/11 and there hasn't been another attack like that. New York City hasn't been reduced to rubble. They'll probably bring us back soon, actually."

Lukas

"Oh."

Lukas seems a little crestfallen. He's quiet for a moment, watching the fireworks pop overhead, his thumb very gently, very idly stroking the outside of her arm.

"Do you think... maybe you'll come back after Lizzy is in college?" A pause. "I mean, I haven't talked to the others about it. But I think we all kinda like it here. I know Rolf really loves it here. Not the city; the swamps and stuff. I think we were gonna stay here at least for a few years."

A pause.

"Does your brother have someone in mind? For a mate for you, I mean."

Danicka

The fireworks are starting to die down in some places. The big show is still going, but only for a little longer. There are longer pauses between the bursts, more fireworks in each shot. The finale will be any minute now, loud and colorful and urgent.

She hears the disappointment in his voice and winces, albeit inwardly. And she is shaking her head even before he discusses his pack, the likes and dislikes, wants and not-wants. She would tell him she actually likes the city -- real cities. As great as New Orleans is, she misses New York. She misses Manhattan and she misses Queens and she misses the whole spirit of the place, which is so different from New Orleans she can't reconcile the two. New Orleans she likes mostly because she has freedom here.

But she doesn't tell him that. He senses it already, and she can sense the ache in him. His last question makes her uncomfortable, but she guesses he's no more comfortable asking it than she is hearing it.

"He's introduced me to a few Garou sometimes," she says quietly. "Nothing has... panned out. I don't know right now, though."

Lukas

It makes Lukas physically uncomfortable to hear that. He knows he has no right to her. Not in the Garou worldview; not even in their own, where he wants so badly to respect her, respect her boundaries, see her as beloved and mate, and not as possession. He knows he does not own her, but he hates the thought of other Garou sniffing around her; he hates thinking of who they might be, introduced through her brother as they are.

"I know," he says quietly, "that you aren't ready to be mated. Not ... like that, anyway. But if you want me to talk to your brother, I will. Or if something seems sort of set, like maybe he'll agree to someone's suit - let me know, okay? I can't ... lose you like that."

He sits up suddenly, the thought twisting until he can't sit still. Lukas takes a deep breath, scrubs his face, exhales.

"I should really have talked to your brother already. It'd be the honorable thing to do. But I just don't want you to feel like a thing, something to be traded around. I want you to be able to belong to yourself, like you said."

Danicka

Their world is, in a way, very different from the world of the Garou around them -- or at least the party line. She wonders how many pairings are actually in love. How many Kin and Garou truly choose each other and simply work the system to support what they are going to do anyway. She wonders how many feel we are different. we are special. we are singular. She wonders if everyone does, when they are in love with someone.

Lukas, at first, talks quietly and sincerely, calm. He offers to talk to Vladislav, and she knows he means challenge for her. He doesn't use those words, but that's what it is: challenge her brother for rights to her, to -- at least in the eyes of the Nation -- have her be his own. His to keep. His to guard. To mate with, to breed upon, to hold until the day he dies and pass on like a possession to the next Garou who will protect her. She knows what that 'talk' means. It means Lukas going to her brother and saying

I want her. I want her for myself.

And backpedaling from that, for her to at least tell him if it seems like her brother is going to mate her off, give her to someone, accept a challenge and graciously lose because he agrees, which is what she thinks he has planned. It's all about control. Even she knows that. Her brow furrows as she hears him, watches him, and suddenly Lukas is sitting up, hands on his face, breathing.

The finale is going off. Danicka glances at it, unable not to, and slowly sits up beside Lukas as well. Inside the packhouse behind them, Hana and her boyfriend are drifting in, talking about getting some water. Danicka reaches over and closes the little window they climbed out of to get onto this balcony, and the voices inside are muffled. She touches Lukas's back, resting her hand there. She's frowning, but not in frustration, not in confusion. Just because... well. She could hardly smile right now, could she?

"I know that's not how it works," she says quietly. "All that stuff I said... I don't really expect my life to be like that. Even if it's... with someone I want -- with you -- I know the way things work."

Lukas

Beneath her hand, Lukas's back is a solid, muscular curve. Sometimes he feels so much like an adult, so much like a Garou and a warrior, that it's hard to remember he's only a teenager. Only a Cliath. Inexperienced enough, or perhaps simple idealistic enough, naive enough, good enough, to think of things like honor; to want her to have freedom and a life of her own; to not want to play the twisted dominance games that have sustained their tribe for longer than either of them can imagine.

"I still want you to have what you can," he says. His voice is a little muffled, so he drops his hands. A light blinks on in the flat behind them. Someone comes inquisitively to the window, sees them, retreats and pulls the raggedy curtain shut to give them some privacy. Benny was the one that got them that curtain, buying it from some garage sale up Canal.

"I want you," he adds, plainly. "But I want you to be happy, too. And maybe that's not how things work but maybe, between us at least, we can make it work like that."

Danicka

And it was Danicka, of all people, who started in on the ruthless mockery Benny received for picking out curtains for the packhouse. It only lasted a few moments. Surprisingly -- at least to the others -- Danicka understood, before Benny ever got ruffled, how far to go, how not to press. He's more sensitive than he lets on. He's lonely, lately. Hana has whats-his-face and Lukas has Danicka and Rolf even has the spirits, has a weird little friend who sees ghosts, and Rolf is weird anyway, and Benny, sometimes, feels like he has no one. Danicka teased him to be friendly. She held off on teasing too much for the same reason.

She leans against him, her hand moving to his leg, and simply asks: "What do you want to do?"

Lukas

Danicka understands, intuitively, how Benny sometimes feels lately: alone, lonely, a little like a fifth wheel.

Because there's Lukas, quiet and solid and never-in-his-life mistakable for someone witty. And he's with his girlfriend, with the girl he loves, with her all the time. There's Hana, who used to sort of be a tomboy and his partner in crime, except now she keeps vanishing off somewhere to be with that kid, that nephew of the Grand Elder. Because that wasn't asking for trouble or anything. And yes, there's even Rolf with his weird little friend who sees ghosts, plus his weird attachment to spirits and the land and all that. And somehow Benny, the one with the quick wit and the quicker tongue, the one with the impish good looks and the ready smile, feels a little out in the cold these days. Like everyone else has come to this city and found someone except him.

So Danicka teases him to make him feel involved. Because that is, in fact, Benny's primary method of connection: jokes. Pranks. Teasing. Nonstop ribbing, and that mouth of his that'll land him in trouble over and over and over throughout his life. And Danicka stops before he feels genuinely singled out. And afterward Benny feels a little better about kinda losing his BFF to this blonde chick, and he sort of remembers fondly how she helped paint their den and at one point helped him splash paint on the walls. He doesn't feel quite as alone, because he remembers

he's not, really.

Benny's still out. He's with Rolf, and Rolf is actually a pretty good wingman because Rolf is just quiet and nice and has this sort of dumb, earnest, trustworthy look. He'll be out til well after midnight, and Hana meanwhile is being quiet and kindasorta pretending Lukas and Danicka aren't out on the balcony just like they're sort of pretending she's not in there. They can hear the voices muffled through the wall, though, and as Danicka's hand moves to Lukas's leg, he lies back again with a sigh.

"I want to be with you," he says, half-smiling. "And when you're ready to be mine, I want you to tell me."

Lukas

[ahem, WARDER. not GE.]

Danicka

The fireworks have gone cold. The sky over the city is dark now, but still starless. New Orleans doesn't sleep any more than Manhattan does, especially not in the summer. She's warm close to Lukas, and she hasn't moved away since they came out here. She's glad it went like this. She's glad they didn't just run off to a hotel room, fuck along to the fireworks, and considering that the thought is a trifle intoxicating, it's a little odd that she's glad. This is good, though: this is right. To be close to him, lazing around on the balcony, talking. Even if the talking hurts.

Lukas lies back again, and it makes her smile. The expression flickers soft and off-kilter over her lips before it fades. She doesn't lie down with him again but leans over, propped on her straight arm, her hand on his torso, looking down at him. Her hair falls across her shoulder. There's a furrow between her brows.

"'Mine'?" she echoes back to him, questioning.

Lukas

"You know." It somehow makes him uncomfortable, almost embarrassed, to say the words. "My mate. Like... as far as the Nation is concerned.

"I just meant - if and when you want me to talk to your brother." His hand comes to cover hers where it rests over the center of his chest. "That's all."

Danicka

You know... my mate. He says this hesitantly, and she can see he twists a bit inside to say it. But his hand covers her hand, and she's glad for the clarification. Mine -- in the eyes of the nation. Mine -- in terms that your brother will understand. Mine -- to be with.

She does understand. She leans over him and kisses his brow, and her hair tickles his jawline and his throat, brushes over his cheeks, and fills his nostrils with the scent of her: shampoo, and sweat, and all of her. Drawing back, she finds his eyes again with her own and slowly blinks a single time.

"Will you let me have my life, even if I'm yours?" she whispers to him, her hand shifting, holding his now instead of simply resting beneath it.

Lukas

That brow, so recently kissed, furrows now. His hand closes around hers, clasp over his sternum. "Are you asking me because you really don't know," he whispers, "or because you need to hear it?"

Danicka

"I need to hear it," she whispers back to him.

Lukas

Which, for some reason, makes his hand close firmer over hers; makes him flex up. His mouth meets her with a sureness he didn't have a year ago when they met and he was barely even sure how to talk to a girl. It's not a chaste kiss, but nor is it lustful. When he draws back, he looks her right in the eye.

"If you were mine," he says quietly, "you'll have your life. I won't be 'letting' you, because it's your life."

Danicka

The curtain is closed. The night is dark, the moon overhead waxing but still a thin crescent. No one is in their own place peeking out the window at a couple of teenagers. And frankly, Hana is inside on the couch making out with her boyfriend. There aren't any muffled voices anymore. They have a remarkable amount of privacy, and Danicka wonders why they haven't come out here before. She wonders this when Lukas kisses her like that, a kiss that's met almost instantly by her own mouth moving more firmly on his, her hand coming up to his face. They've kissed so many times by now. In the car, under trees, on his little flop-bed inside; Lukas knows how to kiss her now. He doesn't waffle over it or overthink it -- he doesn't think at all anymore. He just kisses her, and though it isn't lustful it isn't, by any means, unwanting.

He makes her a promise, even if he doesn't use ritualized words to make it a vow. There's no knot-tying or bloodletting or broom-jumping, just a promise. Not even that, really: an affirmation of what they both already know. But it has to be said aloud. It has to bind him like that, so that she can be free.

Danicka's brow is resting against his as their eyes meet, and then her eyes close. "Then I want you talk to him," she says. "And after that, if you want, I'll stay with you here."

Lukas

Lukas, it turns out, reacts to this the way he did to her telling him - well, any number of Good Things. "Really?" he says, sounding surprised - pleased. A little nervous, too. "Okay."

He thinks a little while. And she's resting against him, her eyes closed like she's comfortable here, comfortable in this private little space with their ratty curtains shut and the size and breadth of the balcony protecting them from the street. She's here like she's his mate already, even though

he hasn't had that conversation, yet. Doesn't know how it'll go. Doesn't even know if this gamble will ultimately pay off. He tries not to think about the what-ifs; what if her brother doesn't agree, what if he wins, what if Lukas is barred from seeing her ever again,

what if.

"I guess we should plan a trip to New York," he says. It's all he says about that. It's there; it's rife with danger, and very little of it is anything he can prepare for. So he leaves it be, focuses on the rest of it: "I think ... eventually we'll move back there. The pack, I mean. Maybe not this year or next, but we won't be here forever. I'd like it if you stayed with me while we were here, but if you end up going to college or something and it's not here, I can deal with that. And eventually I think we'll go back to the city."

Danicka
He's surprised, shocked -- happy, and Danicka isn't really 'happy' right now but more quietly content, at peace with all this. Truthfully she's more worried about him feeling used than anything else, but he seems so delighted at first that it makes her feel a pang because she is not so easily caught up in feelings like that. It is hard for her to feel delight, to feel wild joy. For Danicka, the fact that she can feel things like peace, comfort, and a little bit of soft happiness when she's with him is already beyond what she could have hoped for. The moments of giddy pleasure can come few and far between, but she does believe they will come. With him.

And he's nervous, too, which he should be. She tucks herself a little closer to him, twisting to drape her legs over his lap. They are very close like this, cuddled, and she does smile softly when she hears his heartbeat picked up a bit in nervousness and his analytical mind already planning, thinking, wondering, trying not to so he can enjoy this moment with her, holding her. He gets to saying out loud that they should plan a trip, and she hears his anxiety, but she holds him nonetheless.

"I'm going to stay here," she tells him, though. "While you go. I have to be here for the Sokolovs, and... maybe it will be easier if I'm not right there in front of him."

She sounds resolute. She didn't say she thought she would stay here, maybe, if he's okay with it. She says: I'm staying here. Not to go back to New York City and visit her family, not stand there while a challenge is made for her, accepted or rejected. And they talk, a little, about the rest of their future, imagining they have one together already.

"I like New Orleans," Danicka says, "but I like New York more. I miss it sometimes. It's weird, living out in the middle of nowhere." A beat. She remembers that he spent most of his formative years in the middle of nowhere. "Not weird like bad, just not what I'm used to at all. I miss being closer to... everything." She rubs her face against his chest. "I'm going to try and not think about college or where I'll live or any of that, though. It's not a good idea for me to make plans I don't know if I'm going to be able to fulfill. It ends up hurting in the long run."

Lukas
Lukas grins a little as he hears Danicka pause, backpedal just a bit. No, no. Of course the sticks aren't weird or anything; she just misses the big city. He kisses her hair, does it to show her he didn't mind, he didn't even notice or think about that,

but then she tells him that it's not a good idea to make plans. Because she could get hurt. And his smile fades, and his frown returns, and he breathes quietly beside her for a little while.

"You talk like that's happened," he says quietly. He could assume: it was the baby. Or college. Or any number of things she might have wanted, and didn't get, and don't even allow herself to want anymore. But he doesn't. He leaves it there; lets her fill the blanks. If she wants.

Danicka
When he first saw her, he thought she was such a city girl. A Manhattanite. Slick hair, chic dress, high heels; he didn't realize at first that she was kin of his kind, he didn't realize that she was a child he'd grown up with, he didn't realize at first that she was so, so much more than that. Out here he's seen her in cutoffs and bikinis and old t-shirts and bare feet and he knows she isn't quite so sleek and polished all the time, he knows she's got wildness and laziness and viciousness in her, knows she's animal and primal as much as she is beautiful and calculating. But: she does miss the city. Her home city. A place that is big and crowded and always alive, always there for her to get lost in.

Her head tips to the side a bit. She looks at him, and after awhile she just shrugs. "I've known a long time what my life was going to be, Lukas. It's just the way it is, you know? Sometimes it's better to not get your hopes up, even when someone tries to build them up for you."

Danicka puts her hand on his face, frowning a little to him. "You worry about everything, you know that?"

Lukas
His own somberness melts as her hand comes to his face. He covers it with his own, a slow smile shifting his cheek beneath her palm.

"No I don't," he whispers. "I don't worry about whether or not you really want me. Or love me. Or anything like that."

Danicka
"Are you sure?" she asks, coy and quirking an eyebrow, smiling at him. Almost grinning.

Lukas
"I'm sure." He is Very Serious now, solemn, feeling for her hand and taking it in his own, bringing it to his mouth, kissing her fingers. "You know how I know?"

And a pause for effect.

"Worry-magic." Lukas can't keep a straight face anymore. He grins.

Danicka
She just stares at him. Her eyebrows are up, her expression deadpan, a vague smile behind her lips. After a moment she rolls her eyes. "God, you are a total dork."

Lukas
Lukas looks a little crestfallen as his joke falls flat. The smile vanishes. "Oh," he says, suddenly uncomfortable. "I'm just being dumb."

Heather
Instantly her brow furrows, her eyebrows tugging together. "Baby..." she says, imploring. Her thumb strokes his cheek. "I was teasing, Lukas. Don't take it so hard." She slips her arms around his shoulders. "Don't call yourself dumb."

Lukas
His smile returns as her arms encircle him - slight at first, then growing as he looks at her. His hand covers her forearm a moment. He kisses the crook of her elbow; then turns to kiss her mouth, gently.

"Okay," he whispers. Takes a breath, glances up and back toward the window back inside. "You wanna maybe sleep over tonight?"

Danicka
She smiles gently to him, and her head tips to rest against his for a moment, holding him while he holds her. She isn't cold, but his hand on her arm makes her happy, makes her glad for the warmth. He kisses the soft, tender skin inside her elbow and it makes her smile. When his head turns she knows what he's seeking, and closes her eyes, opening her mouth softly to the kiss he gives her then.

It's slow and sweet, very gentle, but like so many of the kisses they share, it isn't chaste. They are teenagers, free in the world in a way that few human teenagers ever are, and burdened with responsibilities no human teenager could comprehend. Even the softest kiss between them now holds something else, darker and deeper than tenderness.

She nods, her mouth still very near to his skin, when he takes that breath and he glances behind them and then to her again. "I was planning on it," she tells him, and it doesn't quite sound like she meant that she was planning on Sleeping Over, as it were, or staying in the city, just... they were going to be out late, and it's a holiday, and no one at the plantation is expecting her til tomorrow anyway.

Danicka kisses him again, just as soft and just as slow, and before Lukas moves to the window, she's starting to slide onto the blanket they brought out, her hands going to his chest, gently tugging him down with her by the shirt as she lays her back against the coverlet.

Lukas
Lukas hasn't even really started getting up - maybe just started sitting up - when Danicka lays back again. When her hands reach out, her palms finding his chest, her fingers pulling into the soft cotton of his t-shirt. So of course he goes with her, rolls over her as she lays back, and now the way they're kissing, which wasn't chaste to begin with, is taking on a decidedly heated pitch.

He makes a sound against her mouth, which he quickly muffles; pulls away from her for a second to throw a glance at the window. It's dark inside. Hana's probably rolling around the couch with her boyfriend, and they're all hoping the other couple doesn't randomly bust in, and of course they won't, because

this is a lot more fun.

So he lowers his face again. Her mouth is there, and he kisses her, falls into that kiss like he's been waiting to do just this. Her hands are there too, welcoming him, on his face or on his body. The blanket beneath them is soft, but the balcony is... well, it's really just the roof of the story below, so it's mostly concrete and rough and hard. He puts his arms around Danicka, sliding his forearms between her shoulderblades and the ground, keeping her from that uncomfortable surface.

Danicka
No one on either side of the glass is thinking, too much, about the other pair. When the soft laughter and teasing quieted, Danicka knew that Hana and what's-his-name had started kissing, probably started on the couch and moved to her little alcove just in case Danicka and Lukas came in or just in case Rolf and Benny came home or just because Hana is rather private, at least about this boy, like he's special or something. Danicka knew, as soon as the voices faded, that she and Lukas were forgotten. So she forgot them, too.

This is a lot more fun. They come back to it easily, swinging upward in a lazy arc from harder conversations and possible promises to teasing, to nuzzling, to this. And like a child jumping off of a swing in that frozen moment of potential energy, they fly off into a sort of ecstasy, forgetting the effort it took to get there and ignoring the inevitable descent back to earth.

Lukas comes easily over her as soon as he gets a hint that it is welcome, wanted, that this is what she'd like him to do. It's where he exists happily, holding his body just above hers: close enough to touch, not close enough to crush. He glances at the window, though, and she smiles a little, her hands moving up his neck and into his hair, drawing his face back down to hers. Their conversation quieted, they can hear how the city just goes on partying, people pouring into nightclubs -- it isn't even that late yet, isn't even eleven, and it's only even been dark a couple of hours now. But up here, where they are, it is shockingly quiet by comparison.

Except for their breathing, which grows more heated and more rapid every time they kiss. Lukas draws her closer to his body, and Danicka shifts his arms out from under her a moment later, because, speaking from a purely practical standpoint, the arch it creates in her back is harder to sustain than the discomfort of comforter-over-concrete. She reaches for his arm, his wrist, his hand, drawing it up to her side, pulling his palm to cup her breast from beneath. The fabric of her little sundress is a light jersey cotton, thin and a little stretchy and very soft, and he can feel the warmth of her skin translating through it, the supple swell and lift of her breast. She moves his hand on her for a moment, gasping quietly into their kiss, before her hand moves away and winds in the fabric of his shirt.

She could do this, she thinks, just like this, for hours.

Lukas
The first time Lukas touched her breast, he was so unsure of himself, so unsure of what was right and allowed and okay that he had to ask. Can I? Do you want me to?

He's touched her more times than he can easily count now. They've only made love the once. They've made out over and over and over, always stopping as though maybe her mom will find out or his dad will yell at him or any of the dozens of reasons that might keep ordinary horny teens from going all the way. None of them really apply to them, though, beyond the most basic of all: she might get pregnant. And even there, they're careful.

What holds them back has a lot more to do with willpower. And some desire she spoke of, that he feels too, to be a little bit innocent. To rediscover each other - and sex - as though they hadn't both lost their virginities by now. As though they were still so new to each other.

Which is how she feels right now, gasping into his mouth as his hand cups her breast. He moans into her lips, and this time he doesn't quite muffle it; his hand squeezes her breast gently, gently, and then he's reaching down and he's in a great hurry suddenly, he's grinding against her lower belly or - god, if her legs are open to him - between her thighs; he's reaching for the hem of her sundress and trying to snake his hand all the way up to touch her. He doesn't think he felt a bra under that dress, doesn't remember feeling it at all tonight when they were wandering around and kissing and dancing and

and

oh god, if she's not wearing a bra he might lose his mind.

Danicka
This isn't their first time around this block. It seems now that every chance they get, every time they're alone for a little while, they come right back here: kissing and touching each other, gasping for each other, holding off from going All The Way only because they want to, because they are protecting something inside of themselves and for each other. But to put it plainly, they can't keep their hands off one another most of the time. Lukas no longer asks -- or needs to ask -- if it's okay, if this is what she wants, because he knows what makes her groan, and he knows how to touch her in a way that will make her whimper. Danicka doesn't worry about pushing him too far, 'teasing' him, doesn't worry that he will actually lose his mind. She lets herself go a little, in a way she never has with anyone else.

It makes her shiver when he groans, shifting his body. Her thighs do open a little for him, not quite enough to get him completely between her legs but enough to give his lower body a space to rest, a place to grind against her. She arches for him, rubbing right back against him, and then he's -- as was said -- suddenly in such a great hurry, reaching down, reaching under. Danicka gasps out a laugh and takes his hand again, tugging her dress back over her thighs. Her other hand is on his face, her mouth parting from his for a moment.

She's blushing. She's blushing and she's smiling, and she looks pleased and happy, but she is also giving him that nonverbal no,

but also drawing his hand back to her breast. "A little more," she whispers. "Just like this, for awhile." And kisses him again, deeply.

Lukas
There's a moment when his hand wants to resist, wants to stay where it is. He makes a muffled, protesting sound, but then he's relenting, she's drawing his hand out from under her dress and he's dropping his brow against her face as she lets the kiss part. He's panting, and she's blushing, and so is he but it's more arousal than embarrassment.

She replaces his hand. He kisses her neck, starts to go to kiss her breast, but her hand is still on his face and she draws him back, always draws him back to her. They kiss. He's touching her again the way he was, gently but no longer so timidly as he once did, that first time. There's a firmness in his caress. He touches her like he has some idea of what he's doing, which he does. He touches her, also, like he has some right to her --

though no, that's not it. He touches her like she's invited him here. Like she's given him some sign, some unspoken, nonverbal cue, that this is okay.

"Okay," he gasps. That kiss parts, but not for long. "Okay. Just like this."

Danicka
He's all too willing to relent a little for her, to go back to caressing her breast the way she likes, kissing her the way they always kiss. He moves steadily between her thighs, and every few minutes they open a little more until he's lying atop her and against her and slowly, heavily pressing his erection to her with every roll of his hips. Danicka is molten underneath him, her limbs lazy and her body electric.

They pause, after awhile, and strip Lukas of his shirt, sweaty as it is, and go back to kissing each other, touching each other. She holds him by the waist, by the hips, making little noises of pleasure every time he stops and gives her one of those deep, circular grinds. He does kiss her breast eventually, along the edge of her dress's neckline, through the fabric itself. She is, indeed, braless, and every time he caresses her, he can feel how thin the layer of fabric is between his palm and her flesh.

Danicka is very wet. Lukas can't feel it, isn't touching her between her legs, hasn't rucked up her skirt or gotten her panties off, but with the way she's squirming and whimpering and how hotly they've been kissing for -- god, forever now -- she has to be. And she is. She murmurs once or twice about his body, how good it is, how beautiful, how fucking hot, or this or that, and whispers do that again when he does something she particularly enjoys. It's usually followed by a dizzied, murmured oh..., and that sound and how her eyes flicker and her kisses get a little tremulous when she does that is intoxicating. Addictive.

They aren't going anywhere. They aren't panting yet about going inside, or slipping out and getting a hotel room, or any of that. They're just making out, letting the time unfurl around them, til they've both gotten their shoes off and Lukas's shirt off and Danicka's hair down and there's something rhythmic now about the way he's moving on her and something rhythmic about the noises she's making, and his arms are once again folding underneath her body, to hold her up off the hard ground, to hold her close to his hard body. They could do this forever except it's starting to physically ache, all the wanting and the stopping, all the pressure and the longing and the frustration of things like clothes.

A few times now, she's moaned softly, we should stop and yet kissed him again, just as hard as before, moving her body like she doesn't want him to stop at all, like she'd very much rather

fuck him,

only they aren't, they aren't, they aren't going to do that, are they? Only

a few minutes after that most recent we should stop, Danicka is reaching down between them, thumbing open the button of his fly, fumbing for the zipper of his jeans, moaning when she draws it down and reaches inside and feels him through his boxers, panting away from his mouth just long enough to gasp: "Oh god, I just got so wet."

Lukas
We should stop, she keeps saying, and every time he makes a sound that kind of sounds like agreement, but then he doesn't stop and neither does she. And now his shirt is off, a rumpled thing on the rooftop. And now her hair is down, and now they're moving against each other like any minute now they'll give up the farce and just fuck, already,

and this is when she reaches down, undoes his pants with admirable expertise, all things considered. He's gasping

baby, you're gonna make me

but then her hand is on him, she's touching him through his boxers and he's just groaning, his hands are grabbing at her back and his head bows past hers until he can kiss her skin, bite at her shoulder. Oh my god, he's groaning, even as she's telling him how wet she is, and he's taking one hand off her and balling it into a fist and thumping it on the ground like this is the only release he has left.

"Baby," he's panting, "baby, if you want me to stop, if you want me to be able to stop, we gotta stop. Okay?"

Danicka
Danicka stops.

At least, she stops stroking him. She simply holds her palm against the gently curving line of his cock, cupping her hand around its thickness, looking a little bit glazed in her eyes when he groans, bucks against her, thumps his fist, all but shaking with want and restraint, both. She just holds him, thinking of how if she didn't stop right now she could just stroke him off, make him come, satisfy him like she hasn't in weeks, simply because they never get any time alone.

She takes a breath, though, meeting his eyes, trying hard to catch her breath for a moment. Just a moment.

"What if we... why don't we just --"

She exhales, and closes her eyes, kissing him again, starting to push his pants just far enough down his hips so that she can start working on his boxers.

Lukas
Just, she says. She doesn't really explain what she means, but she's pushing aside the last of his clothes and he almost passes out from the surge in his blood pressure, in his arousal. "Wait," he's panting, and for once, for once his hand is trying to stop hers, catching one and then the other by the wrists and then by the fingers, holding them still against his lower abdomen.

"Wait," again. Breathing. He thinks if he can just catch his breath, if he can just think for a minute he'll be able to deal with this. "Baby, wait, what do you ... what are you doing?"

Danicka
Truthfully, she doesn't even know. There's so little blood left for her brain that she feels dizzy even lying down. Right now the world has narrowed down to Lukas's body, Lukas's cock, Lukas's breathing, the smell of him, the looping and mind-altering fantasy of fucking him, having him again, feeling him inside of her. It gets more filthy from there, the terms in her mind less poetic. What little energy is left for her brain to think with is quite focused on the phantom sensation of his shaft stroking her clit on every thrust, and the sweet ache she imagines is almost real, flooding her with craving every time she realizes that isn't what's happening, he still has clothes on, she's still wearing panties, he's not fucking her.

It's that half-mad craving that has her pulling at his clothes, gasping out half-sentences that leave Lukas wondering what exactly she wants, what she's doing, what is going on, because she's gone a little bit mindless with want.

And this means something: every scent on her is telling him it's time to mate. Time to open her legs and mount her, hold her in his teeth, come deep inside of her. The way she sounds and the way she's moving are all reminiscent of that one time he did have her, over a year ago now, or the way she was moving when he lowered his mouth to her pussy and learned to flatten his tongue to lick at her, point it to tickle her clit, how to wrap his lips softly around her and suck without hurting her. Lukas's senses tell him to just go with it, follow it, fuck her.

Something else takes precedence, though. Something else matters more than sensation, and that is giving her what she wants. What she really wants, what matters to her, what will make her happy not for a few minutes or an hour but as long as he can possibly keep that smile on her face. He doesn't know if this is what she really wants. He doesn't know if, tomorrow morning, she'll still be happy about this. Not for sure. Not enough to let her take his cock in her hand and jerk him off or guide him under her skirt or any of the things she might be trying to do with him right now.

This matters, too: she does not want to hurt him. Intuitively she knows how much power, if that's the right word, she has over Lukas. She knows that on the night of her birthday he almost left his pack and injured kinfolk behind because she was hurt, she was unconscious, she was bleeding. She knows that every time she calls him, the way his voice sounds makes her think of a dog wagging its tail excitedly. She knows if she says she misses him and wants to see him, more often than not he will try and find a way to come see her. She says yes, and he draws her into the crowd to find a hotel. She says no, and he holds her close, asks her what's wrong. Danicka is simultaneously unnerved and comforted by his devotion, and she worries for him, because he makes himself so vulnerable to her, and she does not always think she is a good enough person. A person deserving, worthy, of that kind of trust.

She does not want him to be sad. She doesn't want to cry and make his heart break. She doesn't want him to feel debased, used, ridden like a pony because one minute she's horny. She wants, very much, to protect him.

It matters quite a lot that as hard as he is right now, as wet as she is, as alone as they are and as free to do what they want, these things stop them. He holds her hands away from his cock, holds them to his body so she's still touching him but not removing his ability to think or speak. And Danicka stops. She doesn't struggle. She looks at him, panting softly, and she feels a little bad because she made him confused again. She doesn't answer for a moment.

Her eyes close, and she tips her head back to rest against the blanket, making sure her hands are still so he knows she's not going to try any funny business. After a moment or two her eyelids lift and she gently works her hands out from his grasp, wrapping her arms around his neck and burying her face against him. She just holds him. Just breathes with him.

"Mi to líto," she says after awhile, still catching her breath. "Mi to líto, lásko. I got carried away. I don't want our second first time to be out here." Then she says what she hasn't allowed herself to vocalize before, because it sounds so stupid, because it sounds so lame and virginal and silly: "I want it to be special."

She rubs her face against the side of his, nuzzling him, scenting herself with him. She's quiet a little while, before she whispers: "...I kind of want to go get another blanket to cover up with and then... maybe fool around out here for awhile, though."

Lukas
Lukas is holding on to Danicka, trying to survive what she did to him, trying to survive what she's no longer doing to him, and

she says that she doesn't want their second time to be out here. And he's suddenly laughing, even though he's panting, even though what she says also makes him cave in a little bit inside because it's funny and it's sweet and at the end of the day this is special to her. She wants this to be special. She doesn't want this to be fumbling and sordid, something she'll remember with a twinge of shame, even though

at the end of the day where they are, how they do it, won't really matter at all. He could bend her over a bed and pound her the way she sometimes imagines and it would still be them. It would still be the same, exactly the same.

He laughs, though, and she holds him, and he kisses her neck and rolls himself over, rolls them both over with a faint oof, raises himself up to kiss her again. Lingeringly. Warm and deep and --

cutting off before they get going again. Puts his head back, exhales.

"I think you're gonna have to go," he whispers. Laughs a little, "I don't wanna go in there with a hard-on."

Danicka
When he laughs at her, Lukas can feel Danicka recoil a little, see her crest fall, see how she pulls back into herself even if her body barely moves. It's like an animal curling around a wound, hiding an injured paw from view. His laughter dies, breathy and unmalicious as it was, when he understands that it hurt her. That what feels like simple happiness to him comes off like mockery, like this really is stupid and silly. She's so much more easily wounded than him in this way; she heals from such things so much slower than he does.

It doesn't matter where or how, he thinks, but does not say. And the look in her eyes as he folds his arms around her and tries to comfort away that ache, whispers back: Yes it does. To me, it does.

In this lifetime, where she is a far different woman than she might be in another, or another, or another.


When they do roll, onto their sides because she is still curled to him, accepting the comfort and the soothing he's offering, he does kiss her again. Softly. Entreatingly, almost, as though asking if this is still okay. And she kisses him back, slowly, saying yes. But soft, and slow, even though his jeans are still open and his boxers are tugged down just low enough that one can almost see where the line of hair down his abdomen meets the curve of pubic hair. Soft and slow now, recovering from that hitch, that pothole in the road where he was reminded that he is not the only one who is vulnerable to teasing, to being misunderstood, to -- anything like that, really. They are warmblooded, soft-skinned creatures. They can both be bruised.

And he is, too, becoming acquainted with the realities of female arousal. How long it can take to build to a peak. How quickly it can drop out from under them, vanish entirely. It's an elfin, capricious thing, it feels sometimes, as elusive -- and, in fact, as maddening -- as prey that is both fleet-footed and scentless. Danicka must seem so strange to him, sometimes, if he compares her desire for him to his own desire for her. It is such a different thing, in little but important ways. It is so new, and so curious, but

he is also the boy who has held her in his arms in the front seat of Benny's car and learned which spot below her ear on her neck makes her shake and shiver and tremble almost without stopping if he licks it, if he breathes on it, if he drags his teeth over it without biting her. He is also the boy who figured out that when she stopped giving him instruction and started just moaning when he had his head between her legs it meant not that she'd given up on him but that he was pleasing her, he should keep doing exactly what he was doing. He is the boy who she nearly fucked, moments ago, simply because she almost couldn't stop herself. And most importantly, he is the boy who would not simply say well what the hell and fuck her anyway, taking the here and now over the there and then.

They kiss, warm and deep, for some time actually, until he is physically aching and she is so very close to him, rubbing herself gently against him til he's begging her to stop, pulling his hips back and holding her hips right where they are and panting, laughing softly, whispering to her

I think you're gonna have to go.

She grins at him, cheeky, and leans over to give him a quick kiss before slithering away, straightening her dress, and slipping -- with surprising quiet -- in through the window. When it is briefly open he can see that it's dark inside now. There's no panting or gasping or moaning, thank god, just the shuffle of Danicka going to grab another blanket and the soft sound of Hana whispering to her boyfriend. Rolf and Benny still aren't back. Somewhere, far at the edges of his perception, he knows they're out there, they're having fun, they're safe. All of his pack is safe. Danicka is safe. Everything is okay.


She's back, the slide and click of the window cutting off any sound from inside, and she's draping the blanket over him before wriggling in underneath it with him, her cheeks flushed and her body eager. She finds his hand under the blanket and pushes something into it. Something fabric. Something trimmed with soft elastic. Something with a damp spot. His eyes flare, and he shoves her panties somewhere between the two blankets, pulling her to him again, kissing her face, her neck, rucking up her skirt with his hand again, forceful and a bit wild with lust.

Which is accepted. And returned, even, Danicka parting her thighs and letting him grind right against her, nothing but the thin cotton of his boxers suddenly between his cock and her pussy. That pussy he knows is wet for him now, hot and sweet and slippery, and if they build up any more friction he's just going to slip his cock out and into her and they're going to fuck, but they use up their very last card, their very last line of defense, in stopping this time. Danicka reaches between them and doesn't pull his boxers down and pull him into her. She kisses him as she works his boxers down, swallowing his groans, and wraps her hand around his cock.

So many firsts for him. It seems so strange, because she's already fucked him. She's already gone down on him. What she does now usually comes before all that, but they've never done this love affair in the right order. What she does now, too, feels so good, feels so oh god, finally that it doesn't matter what's come before or what will come after. She kisses him the whole time she's stroking him, til he's falling onto his side, then his back, and she's draped along his side, her mouth warm on his, her hand working him to a fever pitch.

It doesn't take long. Not after the dancing and the drinking and then, later, making out until they almost lost their minds. It does not take long, too, because Danicka is not new to this. She is not confused by cocks, unsure of the difference between a gasp of pleasure and gasp of discomfort. He pants for her to go slower and she does; he opens his mouth like he wants something else and doesn't know what to ask for and finds that she licks her hand, reaches underneath again, and wraps her palm around him once more. He doesn't even know what to do when he comes, grabbing fistfuls of blanket, biting back the yells of enjoyment that want to come out because Danicka is licking his nipple, suckling it while she... does something... that he only a little while later realizes had something to do with his cum and something to do with her panties, and he's so embarrassed

but she just kisses him warmly again, slow and tender, whispering that it's okay, there's nothing to say sorry about. She actually says: it's just cum, baby, it doesn't bother me or something. I wanted to make you come. which maybe he needed to hear, or maybe he just needed her to nuzzle him like she does, because he's not embarrassed after that, he's just rolling toward her and wrapping her up in his arms and burying his face against her breasts. She just puts the -- now quite sticky, now quite messy -- pair of underwear aside, snuggling up to him under the blankets again. They kiss while his hands roam her body, stroking up and down her thighs, smoothing over his ass. It's remarkable how well he can feel her when his mind isn't being blown simultaneously, how much attention he can give to marveling at how soft she is.

And this is when he finds out that Danicka, who coaxes him to play with her breasts and suckle them gently and lick the undersides, also really, really enjoys it when he touches her ass. It isn't like he grabs her like that when they're out dancing or something, doesn't pat her rear end in public, and it isn't as though she'd react like this if he did. But as he's kissing her, tasting her whimpers, he holds her ass in both palms and fondles her thoughtlessly, and she moans loudly into his mouth, lifting her hips to press herself to his abdomen. It's a surprising reaction, a slightly surprising place to find that she's sensitive, and it makes him grin, makes him squeeze one cheek, makes her blush as he does so, makes him laugh softly with happiness, makes her squirm a little when he flexes down and pushes himself between her legs.

It's with whispers in her ear that he asks her to show him how to do that for her. Show him how to pleasure her, how to use his hand. She nods, kissing him lingeringly, guiding his hand between her legs, glad she's already so turned on, glad that she can show him how to get her off and glad, especially, that his body -- his hands -- are always so warm. He wants to see what he's doing, can't see what he's doing because they're under a blanket, so his brow furrows and he's concentrating so hard that she almost wants to laugh at how endearing he is, but she doesn't. She doesn't want to laugh at him right now, especially when she whispers

use your thumb

and he remembers he has an opposable one, so he tries that, and she moans softly, whimpers out:

rotate it

and he does that, and she bucks a little, and is panting, trembling when she tells him to slip his finger into her. It does not take long -- he is a smart boy, he is a fast learner, he is so very focused and she is so very vocal -- for him to realize that it's like fucking her. Only with his fingers instead. And because he has so many fingers, he can do other stuff, too. She taught him the very first time they met how to pleasure her, introduced him to her clitoris, and Lukas pauses now only to whisper to her to shh, baby, because she's getting loud. Something about that whisper only makes her more aroused, he can tell because he can feel her clench on his fingers, feel her slick them with new wetness, and he isn't an idiot.

Danicka comes with a corner of the blanket in her mouth to stifle her cries and her boyfriend murmuring in her ear, whispering to her anything he can think of, shushing her, telling her she's okay, it's okay, shh, just be quiet, don't worry, I'm not gonna stop, that's it... that's it, baby

while she's all but biting through the comforter, groaning when she comes, grinding against his hand, against the roof, coming hard and deep and wet there for him. Intuition and instinct tell him when to slow his hand down, easing her gently back down, marveling at what just happened, as he has... pretty much every time he's seen Danicka have an orgasm. It's nice, he realizes, as she has probably known for a long time now, to be able to see that, to not be caught up in his own need to fuck, his own need to just come, to just... watch her. Feel her like that. See the way she looks at him when she can breathe again, when she lets go of the blanket and looks at him, all

dazed and shining, her eyes only closing again when he leans over to kiss her forehead, and kiss her mouth, and lay down beside her.


The next thing Lukas knows, it's Hana tapping against his mind, Rolf and Benny behind her -- in a manner of speaking. Hey. We're gonna go get breakfast. It's like... ten o'clock. Maybe brunch.

And Rolf, happily: Malcolm is coming, too!

Benny: YEAH. 'Malcolm' stayed OVER last night.

Mentally, Lukas can all but feel Hana punch Benny hard in the shoulder. He can sense that she's blushing, that Rolf is just a little bewildered at why they're being so silly. Malcolm is nice. Malcolm makes Hana happy! Like Danicka makes Lukas happy. So it's good. Malcolm stayed here, in their pack den, and this is a good thing, just like it is a good thing that Danicka stayed with Lukas in -- well sort of 'in' -- their den, too. It is also good that they slept under the stars. That must be so nice. He liked his room at the plantation. It felt like their should be stars there. Maybe Lizzy would paint some for him for next time he stayed there.

Danicka's thoughts are not shared with him. She's still asleep where she curled against him last night, wrapped up in his arms, unaware of the affectionate jostling between Ragabash and Galliard, unaware of the plans for everyone to get cleaned up and changed and go out to find some beignets and bacon and so forth. The pack is arguing about who is going to shower first. Well, Hana and Benny are arguing. Rolf is sniffing his armpits and wondering if he needs to. He is also realizing that yes, he does, because he is very smelly. We went to a strip club last night, he informs everyone else, of his and Benny's evening. It was really noisy.

It was awesome, Benny argues, and Hana throws in something about how it's his own fault he smells bad, then, he's so gross, and

Danicka and I will shower first, Lukas finally interjects, easily authoritative, which shuts down the arguing. The rest of the pack will have to wait. Danicka seems to sense that he's awake now. She stirs a little, and then settles, til he lowers his face to hers and nuzzles her, wakes her,

smiling.