special.

Lukas

It's some time before they meet again after the fourth of july. Two or three days after the holiday there's a hurried, scribbled note in the mail: something about chasing down a vampire they've been stalking for weeks, who's been holed up in an impenetrable fortress of a mansion all this time, and who's finally making a run for it across gulf and border. Don't worry about us, the note ends. We'll be careful. I'll call you when we're back.

Which, as it turns out, isn't quite true. A couple weeks go by. Then a few more. And then one day, rather out of the blue, the Bourbon Street Vampire Hunters' serious-minded young alpha mounts the steps to the Sokolovs' New Orleans mansion and rings the doorbell.

It is mid-August. It is swelteringly hot. The air is so thick with heart, moisture and the sound of cicadas that the chiming of the doorbell scarcely seems to have room. Eventually someone comes to the door and Lukas, looking tanned and sweaty and overheated, politely asks if Danicka is in.

A few moments after that, he comes to find her in the shade of that rampant old garden, those sprawling old magnolias. When he sees her, he holds up a pair of

concert tickets. Not rock, not pop, not hip hop. Symphony tickets. Box seats too; way better than he should be able to afford.

"Hi," he says. "Do you want to go watch the Boston Symphony Orchestra tonight? With me."

Danicka

July fourth was great. Showering with Lukas the next morning was great, though they couldn't take very long since everyone else was waiting, too, and yet it was so distracting being in there together, wet and naked and slippery and playful, eager,

til Benny banged his fist on the door and yelled something about how if they were having sex in there then he was going to get the bleach and he didn't care if Lukas was their Alpha, he was going to clean the damn bathroom. It sort of killed the mood, or at least hobbled it a little.

And brunch was great, too. Eating with Lukas and the whole pack and this kid Malcolm who insisted on paying for Hana even though it was clear he doesn't run around with a whole lot of spending money -- it was great. They sat beside each other, Danicka and Lukas did. She hooked her ankle around his while they ate. He kept nudging his plate closer to her and wordlessly offering her his food; she got a very small breakfast to begin with and this worried him because he couldn't imagine that being enough food for her, but the truth is, she knew he was going to want to share his food regardless. It makes him happy when she accepts, when she eats off his plate, when he can feed her from what is his own. She likes seeing him happy.

Going back to the plantation was even great, in its own bittersweet way. The long drive, the crackling radio, the windows down. The pack staying for awhile, even if it was just to take a dip in the river and splash around to cool off. Saying goodbye at the end was not great, but it wasn't heartbreaking, either. They held hands and kissed, and every single one was the last one, I swear,

til it was the last one. And it was warm, and the colors around them were bright and saturated, and Danicka felt no premonition as they drove off again. She felt no omen of misfortune when she read that note, which she wonders at because it isn't a phone call, and it begins twisting and coiling in her stomach. Why a note and not a phone call? Why a note and not a visit?

Because it's something physical. Because it's something to hold onto.

And in the days, then weeks, that follow, the warmth and color left over from that last kiss begin to drain slowly away. She thinks maybe if she burns the note it will be a kind of magic, a defiance of the memento of it, and the universe will back down from her wrath and give him back. She is afraid to keep it because of what it comes to represent, and equally terrified to throw it away.

Of course, she's a kin of Thunder. She knows better and she does not talk to anyone, even Giselle, of the wasteland in her own mind, blasted as scorched, salted earth. She is the daughter of an Ahroun. She has already decided she wants to become the mate of one -- not any one, obviously, but a very particular one. She won't cry. She won't curl up in a ball on the floor. She is better than that.

She didn't even cry when her mother died. She just bled.

Danicka hasn't spent much time in that garden for the past few weeks. She stays very busy, and no one talks, at all, about the Bourbon Street Vampire Hunters. Even Yelizaveta knows better, intuits it on some half-lupine instinct. They study. They work very hard at the piano, Danicka and her young charge do. She cooks, and she bakes, and she has eventually folded up the note he sent and hidden it in the bottom of a drawer somewhere. She calls her father every Thursday.

Of course that's not enough. So she does logic puzzles from a book well into the night, and she reads, and she doesn't listen to much music at all because music has its own way of destroying her. Danicka does not visit the city for some time, and when she does, it is a marathon of shopping, of fighting her way through crowds, of sweating.

She runs. Her hair up in a ponytail, her feet in sneakers, she just... runs. All around the property, if she has to. She doesn't stop until she's on the verge of fainting, throwing up, or dying. She doesn't smoke and she doesn't start to fuck nearly everyone in the house again and she doesn't go clubbing and she doesn't eat very much and she she has trouble sleeping because it is very, very hard to try and deal with this like a normal person who doesn't spiral into total self-destruction when reality is too painful to contemplate anymore.

The only damn reason she's in that hateful, painful garden is because she has decided to tear up thorns and milkweed, remove chunks of broken wall that she's stubbed her toe on, and cultivate that place because as it is, it's too hard to go back into. So she'll change it.

When Lukas comes to the edges of the garden, that's where she is. In denim cutoffs and a sports bra, her skin golden from the sun and even burn a little bit, her hair up in a messy, messy bun that was once neat but has fallen from grace. She's sweating, a jug of iced tea close at hand, and she is tearing these weedy things out of the earth and throwing them in a bin nearby, and wearing work gloves because these weedy things can grab at the skin and make it bleed.

When she feels that sense of rage clouding the periphery of her world, she ignores it. She's felt it a hundred times in the past month and a half and it's been nothing. It does take effort though, a setting of her jaw and a particularly vicious yank at a clump of weeds, but she ignores it.

When she hears footsteps, though, she turns. And stares at him, staying on her knees. Her face is a blank, her eyes dark, an almost analytical process happening inside of her while she decides if she has heat stroke or if he's actually there. But she's starting to move even before she finishes that calculation, and still wearing her work gloves and still with dirty knees and sun-reddened skin and soaked in sweat, ignoring any words he's just said and ignoring whatever it is in his hand and wrapping herself around him, arms so tight around his neck it... almost kinda hurts... and holding him, shaking,

shaking,

shaking so very hard.

Lukas

Lukas must have known, on some level, that Danicka would worry. Of course she would. They are the love of one another's lives, short as those lives have been so far. If he didn't hear from her for a month, a month and a half, he would be frantic. He would be literally howling with terror and worry. But he told himself perhaps it would be different with her. After all, they were apart before, for years. He scarcely wrote then. He never called. She was fine then, he told himself, and she would be fine now, and the more he told himself that the less he believed it.

So: he came back. He brought those concert tickets. He thought, foolishly and boyishly, that maybe if he brought her something nice he could somehow retroactively erase all the hurt he's caused. He thought that, but did not really believe that, and then

he brought them to her, these nice things, and he's scarcely through his first sentence when she all but flies to him. He catches her up instantly, instinctively, those concert tickets he couldn't afford crushed against her thin back. She's golden with summer, red with heat; she smells like hearth and home, like verdant valleys and clear water. She smells like she's his, and that's something he hasn't had for so long that he's almost forgotten what it was like. But she smells like worry too, and pain, and grief, and she feels so thin and small that his arms close all the way around her when he folds around her. She's shaking like a leaf. It hurts his heart. He holds her, and he tries, he tries so hard to hold her together somehow.

"Je to v porádku," he murmurs. "Jsem zpátky. Jsem v porádku."

Danicka

She doesn't ask him why. She doesn't even start sobbing against his shoulder. All Danicka can do, for a long time, is hold onto him. She trembles -- by god, she trembles -- but her slender arms are surprisingly strong, tight as iron bands around him as though he will vanish if she lets go, disappear if she so much as eases up for a second.

Her face close to his neck, he can feel as well as hear her inhaling deeply, trying to remember to breathe but also simply gathering his scent, filling her lungs with it as though the smell of him will stick to her insides, line her, stay. It's too hot to be held this close, holding this close, but they do. They are both summer-colored and slick from sweat, crushing each other in their arms

as though to grind each other to powder.

Danicka isn't the first to let go, or calm, or speak. She is waiting for confirmation that he is real. It's been so long since they were last together. She told him she wanted to be his mate. She told him about the baby that she lost, about the brother who stared at her too long and hit her so very hard and it was all okay in the end, it was sad and awful but it was okay, because all the bad things happening to her did not make her bad, tainted, damaged. He loved her. Loves her.

And speaks to her, confirms to one more sense that he is, in fact, real. And alive. And here with her. He murmurs in Czech, which is when the sobbing gets unlocked. She's barely able to speak, though she tries, and most of it is how could you -- and I thought you were -- and a few other sentences that never get finished. She's not even really crying, just ...almost hyperventilating, and her feet are actually off the ground because of how they're holding each other, and he must be getting stronger because it's easy, it's strangely easy to hold her up like this, for this long.

Lukas

He must be getting stronger. He must be growing larger and more powerful by the day: seventeen and a half years old, too serious for his youth, and already well over six feet. Broadening every time she sees him, as though he grew secretly by night like greenery, like a plant, like some young oak reaching at once for the sky and the horizons. He holds her without effort; he could hold her like this forever, wants to, but

she's already barely breathing right, and he's afraid if he suspends her like this much longer she'll faint or hyperventilate or something bad will happen. So he hoists her up another six or ten inches - until she can wrap her legs around his waist, until he can loop his hands under her rear. And, holding her like that, nuzzling his face blindly against her neck, he murmurs, muffled: "I'm sorry. Oh, baby, I'm sorry, I couldn't call, I didn't even dare think about you -- baby, please, please don't cry. Don't cry. I'm here now. I'm back. I'm home. It's okay."

Danicka

As though summoned by magic, the words don't cry

make her finally start shedding tears.

So that's how it is for awhile, that horrible and awkward span where all she can do is cry and all he can do is hold her. There's no explanation he can give her right now or words he can say that are going to stem that tide, and really, it isn't his right to. So he holds her. And she cries. Danicka at least stops trying to talk, because it isn't going anywhere, and she doesn't really know what she wants to say. Words are insufficient for this.

He doesn't know what it was like to wait. He never had to. She's not sure he knows how this feels, either, to have begun mourning, to wear black on your soul even if your clothes are red and vibrant, only to have the lost, the mourned, the dead walk up to you with concert tickets. And even if he did know... he still wouldn't know what to say.

Words are insufficient.

After awhile she does calm down, and she holds onto him still, shaking every so often with violent little shudders. "Why," she whispers, her voice a rasp. "What happened?"

Lukas

It's then, when her tears stop, when the worst of that storm passes, that Lukas finally sinks down to the ground. The soil is rich here, black and moist and pungent, staining the knees of his jeans when he kneels in it. It's too hot for jeans, at any rate. The back of his t-shirt is damp with sweat, sticking to his skin even before he leans back against the gnarled trunk of one of the magnolias.

He holds her anyway, if she lets him. It doesn't matter that it's too hot, that they're both sweating and - in honesty - a little gross. They've been apart so very long, after all.

"We'd been following this vampire for a while," he says. He looks a little miserable now. Shoulders slumped. Brow furrowed. "Since spring. He was a... facechanger. We thought he was one of those sewer vampires, the ones that hid their real face beneath an illusory mask, but he was much worse than that. He didn't just change his own face. He could ... twist flesh and bone, shape anything living like hot wax. He had a brothel of sorts down in the trashy end of the French Quarter. He got some sort of sick thrill out of watching. But instead of clients going in to, you know, be with a girl he had people paying to see and do ... horrible, horrible things ... and he could make it all happen because he could ... sculpt ... "

Lukas breaks off; shakes his head like a dog coming out of water, fiercely. "Never mind," he says, "the point is Hana sniffed him out. So the rest of us, we went in after him, but it was almost like he knew we were coming. We burst in, direwolves and wolf-men, all four of us. Most vampires wouldn't stand a chance, but he wasn't even there. He'd retreated into the swamp, into this three hundred year old deathtrap of a mansion. There was no way we could go in after him. So Rolf put up a bunch of spirit-wards, and we started taking turns keeping watch on the lockdown. At first he had blood-slaves coming in and out. We took them down. Eventually they stopped coming, or maybe he ran out -- after that, he still lasted weeks in there.

"Just after the fourth, he must have gotten desperate, because he ran in the dead of night. We went after him, of course. I didn't think we would be gone very long. I thought the longest part of the hunt was over, and now it was just the chase and the kill. He left New Orleans by sea, heading for Mexico. We drove ahead to meet him there. We had some help from the Sept here. We knew what ship he was on, what crate he was in. We were ready, waiting on the docks when his ship came into port. Hana and Rolf snuck us in. Benny and I tore the crate apart and everything in it, except... it was just like when we busted his brothel. There was nothing in the crate. His servants had swapped him out. He was gone long before we figured out where he really was.

"So we chased him. But he was always one step ahead. It was like he knew what we were going to do before we did it. We thought maybe he had people watching our internet, so we stopped emailing. It didn't help. So we thought maybe he was intercepting our texts and our calls. We stopped using our phones. He stayed ahead of us. We thought maybe he'd actually bugged the phones or something, so we destroyed our phones. Still couldn't catch up.

"There were times I think we started suspecting each other. There didn't seem to be any other explanation. We'd blocked every possible leak, and still he was predicting our every move. Worse, he was starting to toy with us. He was deliberately leaving bodies for us to find. He made them look like us, and as time went on they looked more and more like us. Eventually he started leaving bodies that looked like ... like people we loved. Hana found one that looked like her mom. I found -- "

Lukas breaks off again. He doesn't even want to think about it. He's silent a moment, and then, slowly, he goes on.

"It was like he was saying, I can see you. I can hear you. I know what you're thinking. I know who you love. I know who you are, and I will break you.

"That's when we finally figured it out. That was exactly it, you see. He actually could read our thoughts. That's what fleshtwisters like him do, and I should have known because Shadow Lords have fought his kind for centuries. They twist flesh, they read minds, and when they're powerful enough they can leave their bodies behind entirely. That's why he got such a sick thrill out of ... fucking with people. That's how he stayed one step ahead, every single time. And that's why he never just vanished completely on us, either. He liked it. He liked that we were chasing him, he liked that we were frustrated and paranoid and scared and on the verge of breaking.

"I was afraid to think about you." This is quiet, this confession. "I was afraid he'd steal the thoughts right out of my mind and find you, hurt you somehow.

"In the end," Lukas almost sighs this, "it was being a pack that saved us. He could read our thoughts because they were our own. He couldn't read the thoughts we shared with the pack. Those thoughts belonged to our totem, and he didn't know where to look. So we set him up. Benny and I, we put on this whole act where we were at each other's throats, accusing each other of treachery, of being the mole for the enemy. We knew he'd want to watch. We knew he'd leave his body and come to us to savor every minute of it. And while his spirit was away, Hana and Rolf tracked his body down and put a stake through his heart. Then we left him out for the sun.

"He had a lot of money, a lot of valuables. The Sept asked if we wanted it, but we didn't. I think they auctioned it all or something. They gave us each some cash though. Like a bonus. So," a little shrug, "I got us tickets to the symphony. And I have some left over for dinner. I thought maybe you'd like to do something nice for once. All you usually get with me is bourbon chicken."

Danicka

Down, down to the black earth they go, spotted equally with patches of sun and shade. Danicka has long since cleared the garden of chunks of broken stone, stacking them along the walls and the like, so all they find when they sit is soft ground. She is still wearing those thick leather work gloves, and she is still covered in dirt and sweat and pink cheeks; it is not her most attractive look, but he can smell her deeply even when she can bear for his arms to ease around her, smell her mingled suddenly with his own sweat, and it is the good, rich, healthy sweat of exertion and not sickness or panic.

Danicka never panicked. Not until he came walking back into the garden, proving that he was alive.

Lukas tells her the story that she does not want to hear and needs to hear, that he perhaps wants or needs to tell and if nothing else, feels an obligation to tell her. He owes her an explanation. They were going to plan a trip for him to go up to New York, talk to her brother, earn her as his mate, forever and ever, to belong to herself and yet be with him. He owes it to her to explain why, why a month and a half, more than a turning of the moon, why.

She isn't looking at him for any of the story. She's sitting between his legs, her back to his chest, holding his arms around her, feeling his heart beat through her backbone and her ribcage, filling her up with his existence. She is sick with an ache that won't go away, simply unable to cope with the concurrent joy that comes with it. Danicka has rarely, if ever, in her life felt so glad, so relieved, so overwhelmed with something good, and she does not know how to deal with this feeling. On the surface it makes her seem blank, now that the crying jag has faded. Empty, now that she has no grief left to fill her. On the surface, she seems so strange and unsteady, but her arms holding his arms in place around her are like iron, shocking in their determination.

When he is done, unable to see her face, it is a long time where she is .. very quiet. He even explains that he wants to take her out somewhere nice, not just a movie or something but a symphony, and in really fancy seats, too, and then have a really really nice dinner because usually they eat street vendor food or diner food or whatever unless Danicka is paying and even then it's not like she can just spend all of her own money because a lot of it goes back home to her father and brother. She does want to tell him that she doesn't care if all they ever eat is hot dogs and all they ever do is sit on a riverbank and watch the day go by, she honestly doesn't care. She does want to tell him that his pack should have taken the vampire's whole damn estate as their own, they earned that.

What Danicka says, eventually, is an echo of a woman she could become in another life, if she never mated before reaching twenty, if she had one miscarriage and one abortion, if she met him when he was so much harder and meaner and trying so desperately not to let himself become entangled with some kinswoman, some less-than, some piece of breeding stock who would distract him from the war. But coming from her now, softly whispered in the garden, when she is still so young and he is so young and they are both mad for each other, mostly chaste despite their passion for each other, living the life they are now, it is even more surprising to hear her simply ask him:

"Did they honor you for it?"

They. The tribe. Shadow Lords and whole septs alike. Did they give him his due, after all he's done, after a full season and more of stalking, tracking, hunting, calculating, harrying, killing, and work. Did they honor him.

Lukas

The Shadow Lord Lukas may have become in that other life - if he hadn't met her, the literal mate of his soul, on that warm night in May; if she hadn't stopped; if she'd walked on and he hadn't shared food with her, a bed with her, the love they made with her; if he hadn't gone on to form his pack, if he'd gone on to meet the Bellamontes, and Sampson, and Samuel, and Katerina, and Mrena, and Dylan, all the rest - that Shadow Lord, cold and hard and unrelenting in his pursuit of what he thought fair, what he considered just, what he was taught was right

would have never hesitated to seize his due. That estate would have been his, to be split amongst him and his pack. And if they could not bear to live on that tainted land, if it was corrupted too deeply to be cleansed, then he would have sold it all, calculated, planned, invested, lived for years or perhaps even decades off of the proceeds and the dividends. He would have demanded the renown that was owed him; wrested glory and honor and wisdom and perhaps another rank out of it all long before the iron had cooled, long before he'd even come back to New Orleans. These things, the capital goods, the renown, the rank, the bolstering of his name that might give him the right to challenge for a worthy mate -- they might well have been the reason he undertook such a hunt in the first place.

The wolf he is now is quite different from that older, colder shadow. He is warmer, more tender, less afraid to love. But he is also a little more foolish. A little less considered. A little more reckless. A little less calculating. The wolf he is now

frankly doesn't care about these things very much. Not right now. He cares that he's back, and his girlfriend is safe, and they have tickets to something nice tonight, and he never, ever has to think about the fleshtwister again.

"Yes," Lukas says - but there's a touch of uncertainty there; she can hear it. "There's renown in what we did, for all of us. The spirits will talk, and so will the wolves, but ... Danicka," this is what is important, "I'm sorry I made you worry."

Danicka

She's quiet then, again. She exhales slowly. "You had to."

It isn't quite forgiveness. It isn't really saying that she's okay. But she's coming to terms with it. She understands. And this, perhaps, matters more anyway: she curls into him, turning her face to his chest and simply being there with him, close as can be to him, because it has been so long and she was so very, very afraid.

And then not afraid at all. Only mourning, with deeper grief than she's ever known, more than she ever thought she would or could feel for another person. Especially a werewolf. Mourning that she thinks, now, she will never allow herself to feel again unless

until

she sees proof that he's gone. And if there is no proof, no body, no spirit, no real fucking proof, then she will not mourn, and she will not give up, and she will still be his mate til the day he dies.

Danicka has her hand covering his heart. Resolve settles into her, deep and hard as stone, and yet she's so soft in his arms, so tender, touching his chest and breathing along with him. He can't imagine what brutal vows she is making to herself in her mind. He can only feel that she's settling, she's calming, she's... going to be okay.

"I still want you," she says quietly, after a time. Pulls back a little and looks up at him. "Just like we said."

Lukas

It is far, far too warm to be holding each other like this, but Lukas is so very glad for it when Danicka turns her face to his chest. It's not that he really thinks she was rejecting him a moment ago. Her back to his chest: he can feel the contact, the connection. Even so: it's different, when she turns to him. When she nuzzles his chest like that, breathes him in like that. It makes him feel accepted. Loved.

His arms are strong and warm around her. He rubs her back as she touches him. His heart is a steady slow thunder in his chest. He cannot guess at the vows she's made herself. He doesn't know why, exactly, she's calmed - only that she has. He has not yet thought, in this life, to promise her that he would wait for her in the Homelands. His hand comes to cover hers, and when she looks at him his eyes are brilliant, blue, deep and black at the centers.

He kisses her. That is the only answer he gives for a moment, his mouth so wanting on hers that the kiss almost tastes of anguish. His brow rests to hers for a moment, after, as it so often does. "Just like we said," he repeats, quiet. And then, as though this is just now occurring to him, "Maybe your brother will be more willing once he hears about what we did." A beat or two, thoughtful. "But it doesn't matter even if he isn't. Once the pack's settled in again I'll go to New York."

Danicka

Perhaps he knew it when he held her after they first made love, or when they fell asleep in each other's arms. There's no telling when Danicka knew, because knowing anything for her is a battle: nothing, not even her own heart, can be trusted. She doesn't dare. Maybe she knew that very moment, and it felt like it then, it felt so real, they were together and they felt the same thing and the perfection of it was incredible, unbelievable.

So she didn't believe it, and it broke them apart. Nothing is perfect. No one, and no feeling. Hope is a flimsy excuse for not having an escape plan, a resolve, an understanding of what is really going to happen to you in the end. Danicka, so soft and so tender that she shrieks and hides when she sees Garou in their war form, is -- and has been since early childhood -- a terribly hard, terribly cold person. There was no other option but madness.

Danicka doesn't know when she knew. She does not feel anything with the same certainty that Lukas seems to, she's mostly sure of that. Things pass through too many filters for her, have to answer to too many masters before she can let any of it in. She doubts. And she lies. And try as she might to pretend that she would rather it be otherwise, she has learned too well that it isn't safe. Not safe to believe. Not safe to feel. Not safe not to question... everything.

Yet somehow, she knows. When or how, she's not sure, but she does know: Lukas is her mate. She may live and die and breed and spit out a beating's blood and learn the preciousness of silence, she may have to do terrible things to survive, but he'll still be her mate. He always was. She thinks, maybe, since before they met. The first time, when he was so wild and loud and resistant to haircuts and afraid he'd be made fun of for poor English, so grateful to hear her speaking Czech. The first time, when she was so terrified and fragile, so eager for someone to be friends with her. She remembers, vaguely, that she adored him when they were children. Defended him, even to her brother, who was the second most frightening thing she knew.

He is her mate. And his arms and strong and warm around her. His heart is a steady slow thunder.

They kiss, and her eyes close, and there's something wet and rough and painful about it, intense. Her hand comes up from his chest to his face, holding him there as though she thinks -- knows -- he'll pull away before she's ready. He starts to, and she follows his mouth, a momentary push-pull before recognition, before he sinks back into that kiss with her. It doesn't escalate, doesn't... go somewhere beyond this. They just kiss. And in the end, they rest, brow to brow, as though this is a way of speaking things there aren't words for.

The words Lukas does have are about the nitty-gritty of mateship, her brother, all of that. She shifts against him, uncomfortable, rejecting, til he gets to the end. There, she settles again. She sighs, a slow exhale, nodding. "You can all stay here, if you want," she says quietly. "Like before. Rest and... be close to us. Malcolm too, if he's still with Hana."

Lukas

Willingly, Lukas sinks back into that kiss that he tried to end because -- well, because he wants so badly to be a gentleman and not a beast. Because he doesn't want to push, because he doesn't want to take advantage. Because he knows she missed him terribly, and he knows now that she thought he was dead, gone, lost forever before he showed up again quite without warning. On this lazy August day. Beneath the black boughs and the white flowers and the waxy dark leaves. Amidst the half-pulled weeds, and behind the crumbling stone walls,

all these things that she tried to change because they reminded her too much of him. All these things that he wants her to leave alone, let grow, because they're wild and rampant and feral and cunning, because they've survived all these years by their own wiles, far from a cultivator's touch; because they remind him of her, and the sometimes shocking green depths of her eyes.

Of course he sinks back into that kiss. Of course, when he starts to pull back and she follows, he sinks back into her. His hand tangles with hers for a moment, twigs and dirt smudging on his fingers. Then his fingers open over the center of her torso, his palm to her abdomen, his fingers spread over her ribcage. He could put his hand under her shirt, but he doesn't. She could pull his shirt off his body, but she doesn't. It stays right here, a kiss and no more, and then they rest. And speak.

"I think they'd like that," Lukas says quietly. "At least -- I would. And Rolf. I'll ask them all later." Hesitant: "How ... how have you all been?"

Danicka

It's been so long since they've even seen each other, heard from each other, touched. There's more warmth than heat in that kiss, more sweetness and ache than passion, but the heat and the passion is still there. Always there, with them. His hand rests against her skin, inches from the sports bra that cuts across her flesh, covers as much of her as his broad palm can, but it stays where it is.

The garden around them, quiet now, no breeze to rustle any branches or ripple water, is unaffected by Danicka's work. It wasn't about changing its face. It wasn't about reminding her of him or the times they've been here together. This garden reminds him of her, and rightly -- it is a part of her, deeply, reflecting her, embracing her like a sister when there is no other place for her. Removing the jagged stones from the ground and ripping out the thorny weeds was not to try and change the garden so it would be different, so it wouldn't remind her of him anymore.

As young as she is, Danicka knows better. There is no mask, no veil thick enough to cover over the face of something remembered and lost. The work was catharsis. The pain was focus. It is always so. And this place has changed in his absence, as she has changed in his absence, but the soul of it never has, never could. The soul of her.

When they speak, she stays very close to him, holding his hand after stripping off her work gloves, tossing them atop her t-shirt over on a patch of moss. She's glad he doesn't argue, say they want to go back to their den for now, even though that might be true. She does not understand this yet, because her own life has not shown her anything to this effect, but: Garou need their kin. And after so long, after such a trial, perhaps they need to be around kin even more. Friends. Reminders. Living, breathing reasons for why they should even bother, why they bear the nightmares and scars they always do.

Danicka, hearing his hesitance, looks up at him with her brows drawing together a bit, wondering at that. She gives a small, soft shrug. "The same. Sadder. At least... I was. And I think Lizzy was, too. Rolf means a great deal to her already. We didn't speak of it. I think Christian and Rick understood how I felt best. Giselle and Lizzy... I don't think they've ever lost anyone."

She's quiet a moment. Then, without anger or bitterness or recrimination, a soft question: "Were you... afraid I'd gone to one of them?"

Lukas

Lukas's brow furrows, quick and light. He shakes his head, adamant. He's been gone long enough that his hair is longer. Long enough to fall into his eyes when he shakes his head like that. Long enough to curl a little. When he was young he hated haircuts; hated family photos; hated sitting still, period. These days he keeps his hair cut short whenever he has five bucks to spare at the tiny hole-in-the-wall barber's down the street. Once, when he didn't have the money to spare, he let Benny cut his hair. That didn't go well. So these days when he gets busy, when the pack is short on money, he just lets it grow out.

"I didn't think that," he says, quiet, but steady. "I didn't. But I ... I didn't think you would think I was dead, either."

It's the first time either of them have said it out loud, as though saying it would make it more real. She thought he was dead. He looks wretched again, looking away, eyebrows drawing together and up, mouth compressing.

"I'm sorry," he says again. "I just... I didn't think. I should have said something, sent someone, did something. I was just afraid."

Danicka

She could cut it for him. He doesn't know that; he was too shy to come near her for awhile after Benny got scissors near his head, and then she didn't say anything when she did see him because she didn't want to make him feel even more embarassed, so she doesn't know how he gets his hair cut and he doesn't know that she could cut it for him, and it would be free, and rather well done, too. She cuts her own hair. Cuts Rick's, cuts Lizzy's when it needs it, cuts Giselle's. Christian just occasionally buzzes his own, which makes him look far more military than he usually does.

Nevermind all that, though. Lukas is learning her more and more, week after week, and learning that she isn't and never was the girl he imagined she was, seeing her in that dress in Manhattan, wanting her so badly it made him ache from brain to balls. More and more, he realizes she's the sort of person who knows how to weed a garden, darn a sock, stretch a pound of beef enough to feed at least six, sometimes eight if she gets creative. She grew up with more than he had. She still didn't grow up with much. He'll learn. Maybe soon, because

she reaches up and touches his hair, stroking it off of his forehead. She's almost lying down in his arms now, her legs stretched out, her body cradled close to his, and looking down at her, he feels adamant and then miserable, and then she's touching his hair. Her fingertips brush his brow. She finds a curl and gently unwinds it, stretches the hair out straight, then lets it spring back to its regular shape. A small smile moves, momentarily, over her lips.

Danicka cannot stop staring at him.

"I like your hair longish, like this," she tells him, which she's never said before and never, in another life, ever told him. It's a passing remark, utterly unrelated to the conversation. She breathes in deep and exhales slowly, her hand coming down to his chest again, resting there. "No one ever tells kin... a timeframe. There are no laws that tell us when to just... give up. If we're lucky, someone comes to tell us. Sometimes they forget entirely. Songs are sung and... no one remembers that they had parents, or a mate, or brothers and sisters. Or children. And sometimes there's no one left."

She shakes her head a little. "I don't know what you could have done. Maybe your totem could have gotten a message out, but... I don't know. You did what you thought was safest, for your pack and for us. I don't hate you for that. I could never hate you."

Those words strike a pause in her, hearing herself say them. She tastes them, lingering on the air, and realizes how true they are. His heart beats, steady as a drum, under her palm.

"I think..." she whispers, "I'll never mourn like that again. Even if it's years."

Lukas

It's unexpected, surprising, and achingly sweet, when she touches his hair and says what she does. His eyes close for a moment, then open again. Even as a child he had such wild eyes, the color and crystalline depths of the sky. Even here, shaded, they are so clear and pale and blue; a shocking contrast to his swarthy skin, black hair.

"I love you," he says. He can't remember if he's said it before. He must have, but he doesn't remember it right now; doesn't remember anything but this moment, her hand playing with his hair, her body close to him. He doesn't remember anything but how he feels.

"And I won't let you just sit and wonder," he adds. In another life he might not make promises like this that are so hard to keep -- but in this life, in this era, he's still so young, so earnest, so very idealistic in his way. "I wouldn't be so cruel, not if I could help it. My pack knows to tell you, if anything happens to me. And if my pack dies with me, then my totem would go to you. And if my totem is lost with us, then the Sept would know to say something. And if they don't say anything, then ... then I'll still find some way. I won't go to the Homelands until I found some way to tell you and say goodbye.

"I wouldn't make you just wait for me forever." He's terribly sad now, taking her hand in his, holding her hand to his heart. "That's a terrible thing to do."

Danicka

Meeting her when he did, so much earlier in his life, changed Lukas profoundly and instantly. The way Danicka is changing is no less profound, but it happens slowly, sluggish as a summer river. So much that has formed her mind and her spirit has already happened, happened before even she knew what was going on around her. He is idealistic, he is optimistic, he is in love.

Danicka has never been idealistic. May never be optimistic. And she is in love.

She looks at him achingly, at all his sadness, and shakes her head. "Baby..." but he speaks, and she lets him, and slowly sits up again, still nestled uncomfortably close to him, itchy and sweaty and hot and not caring a bit about any of that.

Her hand is on her face and her other hand is on his heart and she kisses him softly, just one small kiss on his mouth. "I know you wouldn't," she whispers to him. "I wasn't saying that. I just meant... we don't have any rules to tell us when to give up hope or not. And so I won't."

She puts her brow to his, eyes falling closed. "Can we... stop talking about this? Please?"

Lukas

Lukas isn't entirely sure what to make of that. If he were truly foolish, truly idealistic, the sort of young lover Shakespeare wrote about, he would find such a statement inspiring. But he's not. He's a Shadow Lord, and at the core of him - beneath the idealism this life is lit with, and beneath the bitter hardness the other was shrouded in, is that basic pragmatism, that strength, and that strange, aching gentleness that every single life she's lived has been drawn to. And that core of him knows,

knows that the war is long and hard and dangerous, knows that wolves die young and sometimes so do their kin, knows that to never give up hope is to never have closure, never rest, never simply set one's heart down and say:

okay. I'm done. I loved him, and he was mine, but now he's gone and it is done.

That's a cruel fate, too. But he's already made the promise he can't, really. He doesn't know what else to say, or do, except to try. Try not to die like that. Try not to leave her wondering like that. Try to keep that promise.

"I'm going to call the others," he says instead, changing the subject. "See if they want to come here today, while their clothes and stuff are still packed up from the hunt. Maybe we can just ... settle in here for a while, like you said. And maybe we can all hang out this afternoon like before.

"And then maybe tonight, if you want to, we can go to New Orleans. Forget about this and just be alone together for a while."

Danicka

Danicka nods. She shifts, and moves, and wraps her arms soft and slow around his neck and shoulders. She breathes him in and, in that secret animal way she has that most never see and can't possibly imagine, she licks the sweat off his throat. She tastes every emotion he has in the salt of it. She rubs their necks together, mingling their scents, before she settles into his arms, holding him again.

"I want that," she says quietly. "I want that very much."

Lukas

It makes him shiver, that tiny, tender touch of her tongue to his throat. It hits him in a bone-deep, instinctive way; his eyes fall shut, he turns the side of his face against hers. They rub their heads, their necks together like animals. They are animals.

Then she settles, and he - after so long - smiles again. "Okay," he says very softly.

Later on, when they can bring themselves to move again, they wander out of the magnolias. They leave the garden half-weeded; taken care of, nature unchanged. She holds her gloves in one hand. He holds her tools in the other. They hold each other's hands, too, the tips of their fingers linked, twining together, walking slowly. He takes his shoes off and lets his feet feel the dirt, and later on, the grass. He does not remember - couldn't possibly - how in another life, in another summer, she ran into the darkness barefoot and he followed.

The depths of the great plantation manor are as quiet and cool as they always are. Lukas calls his pack there, not across their spiritual link but across a much more mundane one: telephones, and wired ones at that. They are at their dump of a packhouse, which they have - through youthful exuberance and energy and creativity and sheer willpower - turned into a lively, cheerful, energetic den. They are half-unpacked, but none of them complain. Quite the contrary, in fact. Even a few feet from the receiver, Danicka can hear the voices of his packmates, loud, excited. Well; Benny and Hana, anyway, so talkative between the two of them that Rolf hardly has a chance to say a word. They are all eager to be close to their kin again, even if only one of the full-time residents at the plantation is technically their kin. They're eager to be close to their friends again, period.

"They're heading over right now," Lukas tells Danicka as he hangs up with his pack. "If you show me where the linens are, we can get our rooms ready ourselves when they get here. Maybe we should go tell Lizzie and the others, though. So they don't ... you know, freak out."

Danicka

Before they leave, Danicka pulls her t-shirt, tossed aside earlier in the heat, back on over her head. She holds his hand and walks barefoot with him, pausing and smiling and waiting for him when he stops to take his shoes off, too. Her hand tightens on his. They walk across the grass and they feel alive.

They aren't alone when he gets on the phone with his packmates. Lizzy is close at hand, imperious, demanding that Danicka explain to her what is going on, where they are, if Rolf is all right. Christian, of all people, is the one to distract her and take her aside to discuss with her the behavior that's expected of kin when Garou come back from battle, from hunts. Giselle, actually quietly, slips away to find the linens long before Lukas gets off the phone and mentions it to Danicka. Rick knows better than to be chummy or anything with Lukas, but he gives him a nod after the phone call is over. It's not approval or equality or the like, but it is respect. And hello. And good to see you again.

Danicka stays close to Lukas, though she's itching for a shower. She smiles when he hangs up. "Giselle already went to get them. You can run upstairs and stop her from making the beds if you want, but... I wouldn't," she tells him gently. And since it's already past the time when they've told Lizzy and the others, and since everyone did-and-didn't freak out, she just stands on her toes to kiss him gently. "Want to come to the kitchen and help me start making something for everyone to eat? I'm pretty sure Lizzy is just going to sit out by the fountain until they get here."

A beat. She looks to the side, calls down the hall: "LIZZY. SUNBLOCK."

Lukas

Assaulted by an adolescent princess of a Fang, Lukas looks more bemused than annoyed. He's starting to explain to her that they've been on a long hunt, but Rolf is fine -- and then Benny picks up on the other end and Christian draws Lizzy aside for a quiet word.

She looks older, he muses later, hanging up. He hasn't seen her since a good while before they all rolled out of town on the tail of a fleshchanging vampire. More the teenager now, less the child. He wonders if he should tell Rolf again: be careful. He wonders if Rolf would even understand. He wonders if he really has the right to interfere one way or the other. A little later, he greets Christian and Rick, manages to wave to Giselle as she's slipping away.

"I guess it's sort of rude for guests to insist on making their own beds," Lukas says reluctantly, bending his neck briefly to accept that soft kiss. "We'll do our own laundry and linens though. And help cook. So yes, I want to help."

Help, it turns out, is the keyword there. Lukas isn't a very good cook. He never was. He's diligent, though, and he's actually rather good at chopping, slicing, mixing, scrubbing. He ends up doing all the prepwork and cleanup. Simple and hearty, he suggests. Something easy to make. A big pot of something so everyone can eat until they're full, but no one has to kill themselves trying to cook a three-star meal. So they end up with a thick stew simmering over the fire, and it turns out Lukas can't really cook but he can bake bread, at least. A loaf goes in the oven, and then it's simply too hot to stay in the kitchen anymore.

So they get out of the kitchen. By now the rest of the Bourbon Street Vampire Hunters are perhaps ten or twenty minutes away, and Lukas wants to take a shower, too. He asks for a towel or two. His pack, he knows, will bring his still-packed bag with his clothes.

Danicka

"It's not that," Danicka tells him, slipping her hand to his. Not rudeness, she means. But she knows how important it is to him: not to impose, not to take advantage, particularly when they aren't his own tribal kin and so on. That wasn't how he was raised. She tugs on his hand softly and they walk out of the house, down the softly carpeted halls to the side door that once upon a time only serving staff used. They cross the flagstones to the kitchen out back, a separate building sheltered and shaded by trees where the heat from ovens would not infect the rest of the house during the long, sweltering summers.

It's nice in there. There's a large fan in the ceiling that sucks heat up and out, and the windows are all open, and the icebox and the freezer are there, too. Danicka tells him what they have thawed, what they have left over. He suggests a stew, because truth be told, his culinary palate is still very limited and he is also...well, a teenage boy, and moreover, a werewolf who just got back from a hunt. Thick, hearty, simple. He thinks of full bellies while Danicka is thinking of fruits and salads with lots of water in them to help them all stay cool. She just smiles, though, and nods, and they make a stew. He chops potatoes and saws beef into chunks, she seasons a bag of flour and heats the oil.

Her brow quirks when he starts talking about baking bread, but she... well. Talks him out of that, frankly. There is a bit of putting her foot down. They have baguettes. They have some basic sandwich bread. These things don't require turning on the oven. And it may even mean something, or would in another life, that she dares to disagree with him even on something as simple as what they're making for dinner. Right now it doesn't seem like such a big deal that she outright tells him no, even if it's gentle, even if she's making a good point, any of that. She's countering a suggestion of his, and this is unthinkable in their tribe. This is unthinkable in many tribes, for a kinswoman who isn't even putting out or bearing children for a male werewolf to naysay him at all. But she does. And he doesn't even think to be angry at her for daring.

He's sad a moment, though. Just a moment, before he comes up with his idea. He says he'll bake bread another time. Because he knows how, you see. And it's a simple, basic, life-sustaining thing that has nothing to do with meat but he knows how and he wants to even if he's not very good at the rest of the cooking business. Danicka casts a look at his forearms and flicks her eyebrows up after that, grinning. She teases him: I bet you're really good at kneading dough, reaching over and massaging those arms of his for a moment.

It's hot anyway. The stew simmering is enough, even with the fan going. All the humidity in the air is boiling them. Danicka's skin is pink, not from sunburns but from sheer heat, though she drinks water and iced tea while they work. So they get out of the kitchen, and Danicka is right about Lizzy -- she's sitting out on the porch, well within the shade but watching the Gentlemen, her clear blue eyes on the faraway gate, occasionally sighing. Danicka looks sidelong at Lukas for a moment as they head back into the house, and she doesn't need to say what they both know, and what he thought himself earlier on.

Upstairs, the doors are all open to the bedrooms, windows open and ceiling fans on to air them out. They can hear Giselle humming as she snaps sheets into place, smooths pillowcases. Danicka just smiles at Lukas. "Come on," she says, since Giselle is still prepping all the rooms. "You can shower in my bathroom."

Lukas

She's teasing him about kneading dough, but it's not malicious. He's earnest in his reply: I'm really good at mashing potatoes, too. And this makes her laugh, makes her reach over to massage his forearms even though his skin is, frankly, a little sticky from the heat. He leans over, his hands still busy with washing the knives he used, and bumps his forehead gently against the side of her head. Her hair cushions the impact; makes it a soft, warm contact.

Later on, they pass Lizzy sighing on the steps. Most of the sighs sound exasperated; what could possibly be taking so long? A few of them sound lovelorn. And the Shadow Lords - one her governess, the other perhaps the closest thing to a Garou guardian she has here, scandalously Thunderous though he may be - exchange a Look before they head inside.

As if they were that much more than children, themselves. As if they really were so wise and mature now as to be immune to foolish flights of fancy, the rush of first love. They're lucky in that regard: to be separated by neither age nor tribe; to be quite literally made for one another.

Even so, Lukas hesitates when Danicka offers her shower. "I can use the guest bathroom," he says. "Where would you shower if I used yours?"

Danicka

Danicka gives him a soft little smile, the same sort of patient, almost aching look she gave him when she convinced him to let Giselle make the beds and prepare their rooms for them. There's no way she can explain with her eyes that feeling, and she's not even sure she can share it, make it make sense to him. So she kisses him, very gently, her hands on his face even though they both have skins crawling with sweat.

"I'll just go after you, Lukášek," she tells him. "You've got to stop worrying that you're... imposing, just by being here."

Lukas

He melts to that. It can't be helped, really. Her hands on his face make his eyes close. It's nearly a reflex - like an animal's eyes closing to a loving caress. She kisses him, and he kisses her back, and this is so tender and private a moment that anyone seeing them would feel compelled to turn away.

No one sees them. They are alone in that broad hallway, with the summer's air moving gently around them. If there's air conditioning in this house, Lukas has yet to see or hear or feel it turn on. He's glad of that. As hot as it is, as humid, there's something real and immediate about natural air. He feels the season, like this. He feels the land, feels that it is his to ward even if it is not really his. Understands it. Respects it.

"Okay," he whispers. She lowers herself back onto her heels, and he puts his hand over hers a moment, holding her palm against his face. He is a good deal taller than he was a year and a season ago, calling out to her on that May night. He is a good deal stronger, and the shape of his face has changed a little bit. He looks at Lizzy and sees with wonder her transition from child to adolescent. What he doesn't and cannot see is his own transition, adolescent to adult. His eyes have not changed, though. Nor the way he looks at Danicka.

Her hand falls away after a moment, his fingers curling around hers a little longer. "I'll save you some hot water," he promises, and then looks to see where, exactly, her bathroom might be.

Danicka

Danicka doesn't stay in her bedroom after she leads him into it. She hangs a fresh towel on the hook and she finds him an extra pair of shorts and a t-shirt, so that he'll have something clean to change into immediately after. But she leaves him be.

After a moment, though. The bathroom door is cracked for air and the fan in her room -- that messy, messy room of hers, clothes strewn here and there, books and magazines stacked wherever, dirty dishes in a small pile on the table by the window -- but she goes quietly to her desk and to the bottom drawer, where the note he sent her is. She opens it, reads it for what feels like the fortieth, hundredth time, then closes her eyes. She exhales after a second, opening them, and then rises up from her crouch and slips the letter into the box with all the other letters he sent her when they were separated by entire states and not just a single cracked door.

She goes to help Giselle finish up. This is what she understood when quiet Giselle left the room to go upstairs and put sheets on beds, towels on rods: the work helps them survive what it is means to be kin. All the panic, the sorrow, the flat-out grief gone in an instant when they come waltzing back, whole and hale. Going from mourning to normalcy and back again is a seemingly endless pendulum swing. He keeps promising not to do that to her, as though he could change the very nature of what it means to be what she is. He can no more save her from being his kin than she could stop him from fighting.

So she and Giselle work. They make beds and they fold towels because these things help them remember what it is to go through day to day life. These things don't necessarily change. You still have to cook and clean and live your life, whether your heart is broken or whether your soul is relieved. These things make sense. They need it, and as important as it is to him not to impose, to pull his own weight, Danicka thinks that Lukas simply... doesn't need this, like they do.

Still, she loves him for not taking advantage of it. Loves that he doesn't want to use them, trample them. She thinks quietly to herself that he needs to get stronger. Harder. As deeply as his gentleness touches her, she worries for him.

She wonders if she makes him weak.

The bedrooms, including the very tiny one that Rolf gets and adores because it's blue and there are stars and nobody else gets blue, including the enormous suite given to the Alpha of the pack, all blackwood and red accents, are all done by the time Lukas gets out. Some spare clothes are waiting for him. He can hear Danicka laughing, down the hall. He can feel his pack growing closer.

Lukas

The plumbing in this mansion is ancient, even if the fixtures in the bathrooms are at least relatively modern. Pipes groan in the walls. The first burst of water is fitful; then a deluge. Lukas stands under the spray, his hands on the wall, his head lowered until the water blasts his hair into sodden streaks, hanging to gravity's pull.
He thinks again of Danicka saying that word: mourn. He thinks of that aching promise she made - never again - and he thinks,

painfully,

that it is not a promise she can make. Sooner or later, the war will take him. Sooner or later, she will mourn, and so will everyone else he knows. Everyone else he's loved, and who's loved him. They're heavy thoughts. They weigh heavier on him than the water washing over him; the soaked weight of his hair.

He leaves those thoughts, though, as he leaves the shower. He leaves them with the sweat, the grime, the weariness of travel. They've only just arrived back in New Orleans. They still have no cell phones. He came here as soon as the rest of the pack settled; came here in a car borrowed from the Sept, a nice car, because they're meant to have a nice night.

And they will. Her laughter warms him. The closeness of his pack warms him. He follows the sound of her voice, wearing a borrowed t-shirt, borrowed shorts, borrowed towel around his neck catching droplets still falling from the tips of his hair. He stops by his room, peers in with a smile. Recognizes the bed, the colors, the underlying strength in the room that, in truth, Lukas himself is still growing into. Will need to grow into, and sooner rather than later. Farther down the hall, then. Coming around a corner or through a doorway, seeing the girl his spirit calls mate, Lukas feels his heart give a slow thump in his chest. He comes to her and, regardless of who might be watching, regardless of whether or not she's showered, slides his arm around her waist, gives her a squeeze against his side.

"The others are almost here," he says. "Thanks for the clothes. Do you wanna shower?"

Danicka

It does mean something that he came here, came right to her. This is the young man who dropped everything, turned his back on his pack, and lifted her over his shoulder to take her away from violence and noise and bright lights. He wasn't thinking of protecting her or healing her or scaring her. He wasn't thinking, period. He was acting on instinct, the instinct that had him running to this place and jumping to the second floor, climbing onto the balcony just to see her, just to smell her, just to make sure she was okay.

It means something that even though he couldn't call, couldn't risk the flesh-shaper going after her, didn't even want to think about her, he came right here.

Danicka looks up -- no. She is looking up, and so is Giselle, when he comes around the corner and sees them. They can feel him coming like a storm brewing on the horizon, changing the air pressure. He raises the temperature. And it's quite the sight, walking into the room and seeing the two young women, close to the same age, both golden-haired, both golden-skinned, both slender, both beautiful and pureblooded. It's not quite like earlier in the summer when he climbed up and they were both laid out in bikinis and his little teenage heart started thumping, but it's somehow comforting,

if only because Danicka has such a friend. Danicka's smile is warm, full, tender. Giselle's is just small and friendly. She likes Lukas, and is a little scared of him, but she is scared of her shadow sometimes. Lukas comes right over to Danicka and touches her, holds her, and Danicka makes protests because she's hot and sticky and gross, but of course they mean very little.

She turns and bumps her brow to his jawline, nodding. "I'll go jump in. Do you mind checking on the stew?" How domestic of them.

Lukas

Those protests roll right off of Lukas, water off a duck. He hugs her. She squirms a bit, and then she relents, bumping him in that friendly, animal way that makes him grin foolishly. "Okay," he says, agreeable in a way that Giselle-who-is-afraid-of-her-own-shadow-sometimes cannot quite comprehend, not in an Ahroun. Truth be told, perhaps Danicka, whose only experience with an Ahroun was terrifying, scarring, and ultimately heartbreaking, doesn't really understand it either.

But she seems to trust it now. Instinctively and unconsciously: she is not the girl that was terrified by her own daring the night they met. She is not the girl who was afraid to tell a werewolf, a Full-Moon, no. Not now. I don't want to. And he has never been the werewolf who would beat his kin for such a thing, nor want to.

Danicka goes jump in her shower. He looks after her a moment, his mind flashing to hot, flickering images that belie the chastity of their sequential showers. Then he looks away, and Giselle is still there, and he's still wearing that silly grin. There is an awkward little silence. Then he says, "Hi. Um. Thanks for making our beds. We'll do it ourselves next time though." A pause, then a realization: "Not because I'm not satisfied with how you did it or anything like that. You just shouldn't have to wait on us.

"...anyway." Shifting his weight, a droplet of water falling from the ends of his hair to splat on the ground, "I should go check on the stew. Is Lizzy still waiting out front?"

Danicka

Giselle does seem awkward to be left with Lukas. Not frightened, jumping at every word, but it's uneasy. They've never really spent time alone together, particularly since Danicka told Lukas that between last summer and this, she'd been in every bed but Lizzy's. They've all been careful with him, more distant, keeping a solid buffer of other people between themselves and the Ahroun in the room. The Shadow Lord, at that.

He's grinning, a silly grin at that, thanking her and insisting that they'll do it themselves next time, backpedaling on his own words, and Giselle is just looking at him oddly.

She's quiet a moment, then: "I'm not helping to wait on you," she tells him, her voice soft, "and I'm not worried about displeasing you with how I make the bed."

So soft-spoken, though it isn't necessarily gentle. She isn't being tender with him, but she is respectful. Just... informative. Giselle gathers up the dustcloths from the floor, bundling them in her arms. She glances at the window, as though she could see through it down to the veranda, but all she can see through the windows are the Gentlemen. Her eyes come back to Lukas.

"I think so." There's a beat. "She's betrothed to my younger brother. He's already Changed, already being trained in France. By the time she's old enough, he'll be at least a Fostern. Maybe more." Giselle doesn't go into why she's talking about this, bringing it up, any of that. She and Lukas have never shared a glance or a word about Lizzy's infatuation with Rolf or Rolf's tender little friendship in return. Danicka has never mentioned talking to Giselle about it.

But she knows. And Lizzy, not now but years in the future, belongs to Giselle's family. That's why Giselle is here. That's why she lives with the Sokolovs, serves them and Lizzy herself, given like collateral for the promised marriage down the line. Her eyes do not hold Lukas's for more than a moment. She exits then, carrying those massive cloths, murmuring something about bringing Lizzy inside.

In her bedroom's en suite, Danicka rolls her neck under the water. It's hot but growing tepid, and she doesn't mind, hot as it is. She thinks of nothing, blanking her mind. It's a trick she learned a long time ago.

Lukas

Never for a moment does Lukas wonder why Giselle tells him what she does. And really, it's not as though Lukas ever expected Lizzy's awkward little friendship with his brother to ever blossom into anything more. It's certainly not as though he ever wanted it to. Taking a kin from her Tribe: even this young, Lukas knows the awful weight of that act.Even so, what Giselle says sinks a heavy stone into his heart. Poor Lizzy, he thinks. And after a moment: Poor Rolf. Kin, especially the kin of Fangs, rarely have the privilege of choosing their own mates. And Fangs rarely welcome the presence of their mates' male Shadow Lord ex-crushes.Giselle is leaving, those dustcloths gathered in her arms, when Lukas turns to call after her. "Giselle," he says, "your brother."Do you think he'll be good to Lizzy?"

Danicka

It's not as though it's the great secret that Lizzy believes it is; the male kin here have shared a meaningful glance or two while Lizzy has been hugging Rolf or asking about him in that sidelong way that fools absolutely no one. She's too young for Rolf to really return her feelings with anything but a sort of asexual fondness -- or, at very least, patient tolerance, and she's too young to be able to bear talking to anyone about it. The supposed secrecy of it is, shallow as it may sound, part of the charm...

but exposing it, and forbidding it, or even alluding to the fact that they can never, would make it not just charming but irresistable to her.

Everyone knows. No one really talks about it. But Giselle is the only one who knows the young wolf that Lizzy was promised to years ago. Lizzy barely even met him. Giselle grew up with him... at least one assumes.

She exits, quiet and head down, pausing when Lukas calls to her. Her spine straightens at the sound of his voice, her head turning a moment before the rest of her body follows, facing him again. He asks what he does and it sends a pang through her. Visibly, she takes a breath, letting it out slowly.

One slim shoulder lifts helpelessly. "He... left our household when I was ten," she says quietly. "The boy he was... I think he wouldn't know what to do with her one way or the other. I don't know who he is now. I hear he's honorable. Noble." A moment passes. Quietly, she says, in a musing tone of realization and acceptance both: "But they would tell me that, wouldn't they?" She barely even seems to be saying that to Lukas.

Giselle shrugs. "One could hope that he would be as good to her as you are with Danicka. But... I have never seen a Garou treat a kinswoman the way that you treat Danicka."

Lukas

Lukas is too polite, or perhaps simply too kind, to agree -- yes, they would say that. Even if, or perhaps especially if, he was a monster like Danicka's brother, they would still say that to you. He says this, though, after a while:

"I left my family when I was thirteen. I think I'm quieter now than I was. A little more controlled. And I've learned things, seen things I never dreamt of as a boy. But ... I don't think it's changed who I am, intrinsically. I still like oranges. I still love my parents and my sister. I'd still rather be moving about than sitting still; I just do a better job of hiding it now. I don't think a good mentor would try to change his charge. I don't even think it's possible to do that. Not completely." A small shrug of his own, then. "I don't know if that's a comfort to you."

And then, the rest of it. The truth is, if a Shadow Lord said that, Lukas might well read it as a veiled accusation of weakness -- and he might not be wrong. But Giselle is not a Shadow Lord. She is not a rival; she is his mate's closest friend. So Lukas thinks about it a moment. Then he smiles, small and a little crooked. "But there must be others," he reasons. "Like me, I mean. Maybe most just do a better job of hiding it for fear of seeming weak. But if every Garou ever treated his or her kin like an object to be owned, traded, bred and broken at will, our race would have died out a long time ago. A people that can't even respect their own mates can't be expected to propagate for long. Besides, I can't believe that the same Gaia that would create the Homelands for Garou and kin alike would mean for one to be all but slaves to the other."

He follows Giselle out of the room, then, reaching to take a share of the dustcloths as he reaches her. "What about you?" he asks, nodding for her to lead the way. "Who are you betrothed to?"

Danicka

Giselle, perhaps tellingly or just sadly, does not have much to say to that. She barely knows him, and now knows more than she ever did before: when he left his family. That he loves oranges and has a sister. The rest... what can she say? She doesn't know how things are among Garou or among Shadow Lords, as she is neither. So she gives a small shrug, her own smile faint and a bit crooked, itself. It's quite fetching.

She moves again to turn away, and he follows her, reaching into her arms to take some of the bundle. Giselle stiffens, startled, and nearly drops all of them. She recovers quickly mainly because his question is so bold, and so surprising. She thought he knew.

"I'm not," Giselle says simply, her voice breezy despite the dark words that follow. "I can't have children."

Behind them, the water shuts off from Danicka's shower. Even from here, he can all but feel her, smell her, sense her as though she's right up against him, skin to skin, breathing together. Mate, his spirit calls her, though he can't. Though he has no right. Though he should not dare to put his hands and his mouth on her and yet cannot keep himself from doing so. She's finished showering and she's totally naked right now.

Lukas

Giselle thought he knew - but he didn't. And she can see that now, so clearly, because of the way his brow furrows and the way his eyes suddenly turn aching. Lukas is a gentle wolf, and gentler in this life than he dared to be in the other. Lukas is also a wolf fiercely devoted to family, to ancestry and offspring, or at least the idea of both. It saddens him to imagine a life without the possibility of cubs, or perhaps even of mate. He can barely imagine it.

"I'm sorry," he murmurs. "I didn't know."

This is when the shower stops, and the pipes clank in the walls, and his little teenage heart thumps and his little teenage mind goes from the bleakness of a cubless life to decidedly more impure things. He colors slightly. Then, perhaps because he doesn't trust himself in Danicka's presence alone - not like this, anyway - he nods Giselle toward the door.

"Come on. I'll help you get these wherever you're taking them. Then I'll go check on the stew. My pack will be here soon."

So that is what they do. Giselle shows Lukas where the dustcloths go. He puts his share down next to hers. Then they separate - Giselle to make whatever arrangements might be necessary for this late lunch; Lukas to go sniff at the pot of hot-meat-that-is-good-to-eat. It seems done to him, or at least done enough, even though he's fairly sure longer stewing would make the meat even more tender. He spoons out perhaps half the stew, leaving the rest to simmer, and he's walking the to-be-eaten half back to the main house with baguettes in tow when he hears and feels the sudden ruckus of his pack's arrival.

Hana is dressing a little more carefully these days. She looks startlingly leggy and not quite so much like a well-washed street urchin in a light yellow sundress. Poor Benny appears to have hit that awkward phase when his limbs have grown gangly and his face insists on erupting in pimples at the slightest provocation. And Rolf,dotty, odd-eyed Rolf,

is his big, friendly, slightly hapless self as he thuds up the porch steps to wave at... well, whoever, really. He has a dandelion tucked behind his ear, happy and yellow. It too looks like a sunburst. He doesn't care that Benny thinks it looks froufrou. Benny is all pimply, anyway, and is hardly a reliable authority on looking presentable.

Lukas comes out on the porch behind whoever might have gone out to greet the other three-fourths of the BSVS. He grins broadly at them. "Stew," he says. "Danicka made it. I helped."

Danicka

It's a crime, she's heard it said, that she's so beautiful -- and so well-bred, and the sister of a Garou -- and useless for anything but serving other Silver Fangs. What a waste, all that beauty and grace when it can't be passed along. Giselle doesn't look sad or upset by it, though it makes Lukas ache.

He and Danicka, foolish young things that they are, haven't talked much or at all about what sort of lives they imagine for themselves, what they want. He is pained by the idea of a life without a mate, without cubs, without other bloods and bodies and spirits tied intrinsically to his own. The scent of his mate and his pack is in his nostrils always; they are there with him when he is miles away. What a deep grief it would be to lose that... or never know it at all.

Giselle gives a simple, small shake of her head when he says he's sorry. It's okay; he didn't know. And he has not hurt her by asking the question. They head downstairs, and down to the basement, where Giselle and he start putting the dustcloths in the washing machine and dryer, which are actually very new and top of the line, not to mention quite large. They pass by Rick and Christian on the way, who are playing pool on the table down there. Rick looks a little surprised to see Lukas carrying laundry; Christian's regard is quieter, harder to read, and, frankly, more focused on Giselle and how she's dealing with an Ahroun trailing around with her.

Giselle heads back upstairs and Lukas heads outside to the kitchen, the rough-hewn but time-polished table with its long benches on either side where they've all eaten in the past. Lizzy used to be served separately by Giselle within the house, but none of that anymore. People are coming upstairs, downstairs, in the door when the pack arrives, noisy and sudden. There's teenagers and near-adults and one near-teen all colliding. Danicka there, her hair wet and up in a twisted bun, Hana in her sundress, Giselle shyly greeting Benny and Rolf, Lizzy asking Rolf all sorts of questions, Danicka hugging various people tightly, the sun and shade hitting all of them at turns as they crash gently, happily together on the porch.

Stew, Lukas says, holding a pot and a bunch of bread. He helped. That gets a laugh out of more than one of them. Benny is telling Rick and Christian about the vampire they hunted, and being both men of violence with varying degrees of honor, they are, in fact, deeply interested in the Galliard's way of telling it. Danicka, though she's inched closer to Lukas, is asking Hana if Malcolm is coming, if he'll meet them out here or some such. Giselle is saying she'll get some blankets and drinks; they can just eat out here on the veranda. Christian heads in to help her; Lukas and Danicka and the rest start to settle down, breaking bread

literally.

Lukas

Lukas, in his hurry to be close to his pack, has forgotten bowls and spoons. He realizes this too late, as they're all gathering around the stew and sitting on the porch, but it's all right - they have bread. All the same, the pack waits for a cue from the permanent residents of the plantation to see whether they'll eat with their hands and the bread, or with bowls and silverware.

Danicka is not the only one inching closer. Lukas does some inching of his own, and pretty soon the two of them are side by side, sharing a baguette. Benny does most of the talking, regaling them all with the tale of the hunt, but once in a while Lukas interjects to correct a detail - or stop a line of narrative that grows too terrible.

Unsurprisingly, Benny is best at telling tales of raw pitched battle. Even sparse and broad as his strokes are, his words have a certain vivid power to them. His audience can all but feel the oppressive still heat of central Mexico; hear the night calling birds. Smell the dank earth of the vampire's lair, and then the rot of his flesh. Taste the sweet victory, so long in the making.

Benny tells it better than it was, though. He's a Galliard, after all. Lukas, quiet over his stew, thinks instead of how desperate they were at the end; how much they risked, how much they sacrificed.

When Benny is done, Lukas's stew is gone. Hana, sending the direction of his thoughts perhaps even before he does, suggests that the rest of the pack move into their old rooms. And Lukas, freed from their presence, says to Danicka in a low voice:

"Do you wanna go somewhere where we can be alone for a while?"

Danicka

Though Danicka already heard the grand tale of their vampire hunt and victory, hearing it from Benny is different. He draws the pack into it: Rolf to supply the name of a spirit he called when Benny knows perfectly well what the spirit's name was, Hana to describe in brief what she saw when she scouted ahead that one time, Lukas to correct a detail, guide away from the darker things when Lizzy is sitting right there and Giselle looks so pale. Benny is a Galliard, but not all Galliards are storytellers -- and Benny is that, too.

While they eat and listen, Danicka sits easily beside Lukas, all inching over and done with. She breaks bread to hand to him and he shares the last drops of stew in his bowl with her. They drink beers and lemonade, sitting in the shade on the porch. Rick and Christian are too couth, at least in the presence of Lizzy, to strip out of their shirts, but most of the gathered Kin and Garou are soaking through those shirts. They use ice cubes to melt along the backs of their necks.

Hana's suggestion, so apt at the moment, stirs a few of them. No one offers to help: by now they know that the pack travels very light and they also know of Lukas's (and the rest of the pack's, really) insistence on not being an imposition. But they do walk with them, and walk upstairs, and Rick finally hits his limit and says he's driving to town and buying half a dozen window units because he can't live in this heat anymore. As he stomps toward the garage he can be heard telling Christian that he can't understand why people would choose to live in land like this. But then, he's Irish.

And Lukas, still on the porch, wants to know if he can be alone with Danicka. She gives him a soft smile. Nods. Giselle and Christian have started gathering up dishes to take to the kitchen; Lizzy is trailing after Rolf toward the car. Danicka rises slowly, her hand trailing down Lukas's arm, taking his hand as she gets to her feet. "Let's go get ready to go to the symphony," she tells him.

Lukas

Lukas sort of agrees with Rick's assessment of the land. It might be one of the few points on which the Ahroun and the martial-minded kinsman outright agree, even if the open enmity - at least on Lukas's side - has faded with time. As he and Danicka wander into the cooler recesses of the house, Lukas takes his girlfriend's hand a little more firmly, smiling.

"We'll help install the window units," he says: trying hard, it's clear, to pull his own weight.

Get ready for the symphony, she says. And this thrills him in some quiet way, because he's never been to the symphony, at least in his memory. He doesn't know exactly what getting ready means. "I don't really have anything to wear," he admits.

Danicka

"Oh, just let them do it," Danicka tells him, at least regarding the AC. "Rick won't even be back for at least a couple of hours." Her hand tightens a little on his, a gentle squeeze. "You don't need to try so hard to prove you're not like other Shadow Lords," she says more quietly, as they walk toward the stairs. "You don't have to try so hard to prove anything to anyone."

They're heading up to the bedrooms, it seems. Up to her room, most likely. Or his. She smiles at his admission, then thinks a moment. "Well, do you have any money left over? Because then we'll just get you something nice in the city." She's smiling, looking back at him as she walks.

Lukas

Lukas's brow furrows as they ascend the stairs. "It's not that I'm trying to prove anything," he replies quietly. "I just don't want to take advantage.

"But," he adds, "I know I'm not really. So... maybe I - we, the pack - can just help when we see a chance. And otherwise, maybe you guys can just call or let us know if you need help. Okay?"

And as she reaches the top of the stairs, turning to smile over her shoulder at him -

well, first and foremost, it sets his little teenage heart all a-patter. It makes him bound the last few steps up, too, coming abreast of her and returning her smile.

"Probably not enough for a suit or anything," he admits. "Plus I should save some for a window unit for the packhouse. But maybe you can help me pick out a shirt and tie or something."

Danicka

To that first sentence or two, Danicka says nothing. She doesn't argue, doesn't analyze, but she doesn't reassure him either. She keeps walking, albeit slowly, up the stairs. He goes on, following her, working it out aloud, and she gives him a wry little smile. "You... worry a lot, don't you?"

That smile is deceptive, in its way. It is wry; her voice is careful not to sound sad. Or something like sad. Whatever she feels runs like a current under ice: rarely ever felt, only briefly glimpsed if at all. The real tragedy there is not how hard it can be for Lukas -- or anyone -- to know her. The real sorrow is that when she feels something she needs someone else to know and understand, the more fervently she expresses it, the less she trusts that anyone will believe her.

As for clothes, that's all she says about that.

Lukas

That last word brings on a quick blurt of laughter - a moment of levity and silliness that briefly transforms his face. There he is: balanced on a knife's brink between boy and man, cub and wolf. For a moment the scales tip backwards and he's young, he's still a little bit wild, he's the type who would laugh and run recklessly, slip and fall, do it all over again.

And then it's gone, and he's growing serious again. "I guess I'm just used to thinking about everything I do. Considering my actions and their consequences, looking ahead. It's the only way I've been taught to not be a reckless raging monster. And especially after the others started following me, I've always had to be responsible and deliberate, or at least try." He looks down, his forearm turning under her hand, his hand coming up to cradle her forearm in turn. "I don't want to be a fussbucket either," he admits, "but I really don't want to be a monster. And sometimes I don't know where the line is, so I'd rather stop far short than overshoot."

He resumes walking, then, his hand coming to find hers after all. "Maybe you can help me," he suggests. "Maybe if I'm really gnawing on one thing over and over, and unnecessarily, you can just ... tell me to stop."

Danicka

[DLP!]

Lukas

Lukas does worry a lot. This is a fundamental truth that Danicka is rapidly learning, or has already learnt. Lukas is also rather bluntly honest, and that is why he turns to Danicka, serious.

"Yes," he says. And also: "Is that a bad thing?"

Danicka

They're at the top of the stairs now, a few inches away, and now she has to look up to see him. Last year he was already taller than her, but closer to eye level. Now he's shooting up it seems by three or four inches at a stretch, and his shoulders are getting broader and the hair on his arms is darker and there's a firmness to his jaw that wasn't there before. He changes so drastically, so quickly, so visibly. It's another way that she is more subtle than he is, determined by nature rather than circumstance.

"Yes, sometimes," she says. "You aren't careless, and that's good. But eventually you'll have to learn to let go."

She reaches over and touches his forearm, not to reach for his hand but just to touch him, just to make contact. Her eyebrows are snuggled together a little bit. "I just don't want you to be... a fussbucket."

Lukas

That last word brings on a quick blurt of laughter - a moment of levity and silliness that briefly transforms his face. There he is: balanced on a knife's brink between boy and man, cub and wolf. For a moment the scales tip backwards and he's young, he's still a little bit wild, he's the type who would laugh and run recklessly, slip and fall, do it all over again.

And then it's gone, and he's growing serious again. "I guess I'm just used to thinking about everything I do. Considering my actions and their consequences, looking ahead. It's the only way I've been taught to not be a reckless raging monster. And especially after the others started following me, I've always had to be responsible and deliberate, or at least try." He looks down, his forearm turning under her hand, his hand coming up to cradle her forearm in turn. "I don't want to be a fussbucket either," he admits, "but I really don't want to be a monster. And sometimes I don't know where the line is, so I'd rather stop far short than overshoot."

He resumes walking, then, his hand coming to find hers after all. "Maybe you can help me," he suggests. "Maybe if I'm really gnawing on one thing over and over, and unnecessarily, you can just ... tell me to stop."

Danicka

He didn't always take her so seriously.

No, that was another man. That was a man, and Lukas, this Lukas, is still half cub, half boy, steel still hot from the fire and not tempered by the hammer and the cold. This Lukas laughs so easily, and not at her expense, not at anyone's expense. This Lukas is shamed when he is selfish. This Lukas does not scoff at Danicka's opinion, or Danicka, or... anyone. He feels anger and he feels hurt and he feels all these things instantaneously at times, but disdain has found no fertile soil in him yet.

Danicka is not afraid to make him laugh. She is not furious when he laughs, because there's so little -- there's nothing -- about him that is meanspirited or cruel. He is trying so hard not to become a monster. He is not trying as hard not to be weak. Strange, how the thought that she might make him weak made him leave her once upon that other, unformed life. Strange, that in this one she worries that she is making him -- or keeping him -- too young, too idealistic, too weak. Strange, that in this life, they could be so reversed and yet faced with the same stark, bitter reality:

to be what he is, to survive, to protect his pack and his kin and his mate, he must not be weak. If he is weak, he will falter. And the thing he must protect them all from the most is not the enemy searching for its chance to strike -- it's his own will, too fragile to withstand the onslaught of his own rage.

Fussbucket. Better than being a monster. As if he has that much of a choice.

These are dark thoughts, barely so much as flitting through Danicka's forest-dark eyes. She touches him and he touches her and for a moment their clasp is somewhere between that of lovers and that of warriors. Her fingertips graze his brachial artery, her eyes holding his.

She wants to tell him that he will eventually have to find that line. Meet it, cross it, endure the consequences. She wants to tell him that she's grateful that he tries so hard not to be something horrific. She wants to tell him that it only scares her more, because eventually he'll lose control and he won't know what to do, how to deal with it, any of that.

Danicka squeezes his arm, the meat of that strong forearm, and smiles softly. "I'll always help you."

Lukas

What Lukas has lacked thus far in this life is the very thing that made him so hard, so distrustful in the other: true, bitter adversity; the sort that could only be overcome by being hard and cold and wary. In some ways, this makes him a better person. In others, it makes him

softer. Weaker. It sets him up for a rather painful awakening into adulthood, where his brand of idealism is sure to die a rather sudden death. Sooner rather than later, maybe: he's going to talk to her brother soon, after all.

Still. She says she'll always help him. And he believes her, beyond a shadow of a doubt. Her hand squeezes his arm. He pulls her close, hugging her against his chest despite the weather and the heat and the fact that they've both finally just gotten unsticky.

"Thank you," he murmurs.

And she does help him. Even in something so trivial as shopping for clothes, she helps him. They go into town, and he wears his best shirt and his best slacks, both of which she's seen many times before (usually on a date night), both of which are starting to show wear. Not to mention, both of which he's rapidly outgrowing. They stop by a Macy's, but Lukas stares wretchedly at the price tags and does some mental math and realizes he can't afford anything there. Danicka is the one that comes up with the idea of visiting the Goodwill near the French Quarter. Lukas is a little unsure - are secondhand stores clean? - but Danicka assures him that in a place like the Quarter the merchandise was likely to be worn-once outfits from last season, cast off by some fashion-conscious richling.

Which she's right about. It takes a bit of hunting - there are more women's clothes than men's - but eventually they find a decent suit that fits Lukas's height. It's classic black, conservatively cut; its previous owner was a little heavier and likely older than Lukas, and there's a bit of spare at the waist, but if he wears it fastened with a single button it's less obvious. Besides, they can get it altered later.

By then it's near five thirty. And Lukas, wearing his new suit and a tie Danicka has also seen before, suggests that they splurge and go somewhere nice for dinner.

Danicka

Before they leave the plantation, Danicka messes with her hair. She puts light colors on her eyelids and a coating of thin black on her lashes. She puts another color -- a whole other one! -- on her mouth that doesn't really seem to change her lips except suddenly they seem fuller, and her eyes are a richer color, and her skin has a fresh, dewy look. She futzes with her computer for awhile and won't let him see what she's doing: being a nerd, she claims, and this is likely true. She goes ahead and gets dressed there, slipping into a dress just as fine and trendy as the one she wore on her birthday but not that one, no, that one was ruined and this one is cream-colored and has lace on the edge of the short hem and fits her a bit more snugly. She wears black heels that have tiny lace bows on the toes.

And they go into town. He's shopping in his shirt that he rolls the sleeves up on so it won't show that they don't quite meet his wrists anymore. He's painfully aware of the scuffed fabric on the cuffs. He takes her in Benny's car, which Benny is still ever-so-generously allowing them to use whenever they go on dates, and Hana has even used it, and nooo of course Benny's not jealous that the two of them have significant others and he's stuck with dandelion-head over there whose best friend is a thirteen year old princess who sees dead people, nooo.

Lukas can see the inside of one of her thighs when she crosses her legs in that car. Sees the back of one leg as her skirt slips up when she exits the car. She tans in a bikini; her skin is golden and warm, drenched with light like wheat drying in the sun.

They go to Macy's, which is Lukas's idea. Maybe he has memories of his parents shopping with him there, or seeing the parade, or... something. But they go in and Danicka sees a lot of things that aren't even that pricey but he looks so miserable, every emotion playing across his face as though he has no ability to filter them. She starts to suggest a place, she thinks of just doing what she thought initially and buying him a new outfit, or maybe two, and it would be expensive but he was gone for a month. He was gone and she thought he was dead and forgot what his voice sounded like and that gave her nightmares.

But he looks at the price tags and doesn't say anything. He just looks wretched. Miserable. Sad. Embarrassed. Uneasy. She smiles and rolls her eyes at Macy's, taking his hand and telling him she's going to show him where she likes to shop. This is not a lie, when they end up at Goodwill: Danicka is not that wealthy. She makes a very good paycheck and sometimes she splurges on truly nice things, but so much of her money still goes to her family. She does shop at Goodwill. She shops at this Goodwill, in fact, and it is a struggle for her not to peer at things for herself when they're trying to find Lukas something to wear.

They get lucky. He gets his suit and she says she knows a cheap tailor who is actually near the plantation, across the river -- or Giselle can do it, she's a whiz with a needle. Danicka insists on a new shirt, and she also insists on buying it for him. It's got fold-lines in it, sure, but when he wears his suit jacket they don't show. It's cream-colored, lightweight, with a barely discernable diamonds through the fabric that show when he moves in the light. She fixes his tie after he changes. There's something deep in her eyes as she looks up at him, her hands resting lightly on his lapels after adjusting the knot, but it has no words and she gives it no voice.

They're teenagers. But with his rage and their breeding and in these clothes, they carry a weight with them wherever they go. People treat them like they're older, walking back out to the car. Danicka keeps holding his hand, as though loathe to let go. As though she missed him. As though she's afraid he'll vanish.

"What do you feel like?" she asks him, as they get back into the car. "Steak?"

Lukas

Actually, for once it's not Benny's car. Benny drove his own car here with the rest of the pack; Lukas got here himself in a car borrowed from some Glass Walker in the city, a little Jetta that's a sight better than Benny's aging hatchback. A nice car. Nice clothes. A nice dinner, and a night at the symphony: the sort of thing Lukas can't offer his girlfriend very often.

It does take a bit of insistence before Lukas will let Danicka buy him a shirt, but in the end he relents. She picks one out that he likely wouldn't have looked at himself. Lukas isn't terribly fashionable. He sticks with the tried-and-true: the white shirts, the blue, the ones without any sort of pattern or design. He's uncertain about the one she hands him, but then

it looks good on him, the shimmering faint patterns somehow accentuate the cut of his torso, and the lightness of the fabric feels cool on his skin. It's not miserable to wear in this weather, even with a coat atop it. She ties his tie for him. There's a moment where her hands rest on him, and he doesn't know what she's thinking, but he's thinking:

this is what it's like to be mated and married. this is what it would be like.

So, freshly re-dressed and readied, they head out together. And Danicka holds his hand, almost like she's afraid to let go, and he looks both ways for the both of them before crossing the streets. Steak, she suggests. He laughs; thinks about it a moment.

"Lamb, maybe?"

Danicka

When they left the plantation and walked down the pathway to the car, Danicka -- expecting to see Benny's little hatchback -- is a bit floored. She wonders if Lukas actually took a great deal more money than he claimed, if he bought a new car for the pack, if one of the other pack members used their share to get the Jetta... but no. He explains as they drive (with air conditioning, even) that he borrowed it from a Glass Walker at the non-sept in New Orleans, which tickles her for some reason.

Maybe because Lukas is so earnest. Maybe because Lukas isn't a typical Shadow Lord, in a pack of atypical Shadow Lords -- usually, particularly in places like New York City, people are constantly trying to give favors to Shadow Lords so that maybe, down the line, the Lord will owe them one. A cunning Lord will deny every favor he can while retaining his honor. Lukas is not a cunning Lord.

But he is an open one. His heart, that is. And so, in truth, she doesn't think the Walker is trying to get anything from him. She thinks: Lukas would help out anyway. It's hard to get him to stop helping.

The shirt looks good on him. Of course she looks good most of the time, even her grungy, lay-around-the-house clothes having a bit of style to them, but he had no way of knowing that it would translate to boy clothes. It does. She guesses his pant size within a half-inch, never asking herself if this is strange, assuming she's just really familiar with male clothing, or maybe assuming that everyone can eyeball measurements and do mental trigonometry while playing pool, but there it is. She knows his form, too. She's memorized much of it, all those times they've run their hands over each other, discovered each other without ever crossing their self-imposed boundary.

His heart beats under her hand when she stands in front of him, newly dressed, and she smiles at him. He thinks about how this is what it would be like, and he's too young for the word 'married' not to terrify him, but it doesn't. He's an animal who craves pack, who needs family, whose soul longs for the connections of blood and spirit, both.

She gives him a small kiss before they walk out. Suggests steak, laughs when he says lamb. "Lamb," she agrees, then thinks a moment. "There's a place I've been wanting to try on Dauphine street, called Bayona. It's very nice."

Lukas

"I've seen it," Lukas says, excited because he actually knows, he's seen this place - but then he admits, "We caught a vampire that worked the kitchens. One of the chefs, who regularly snacked on patrons who went back to thank him for the meal. There... might have been a slight decrease in the quality of the food, afterward."

Then he smiles again. They're at his borrowed car. He opens the door for her. It feels a bit like prom, really, though the prom night they spent together was nothing like this. And this doesn't really feel like prom either. Prom dates are rarely people you've given up for dead, miraculously returned.

"We should still go, though. I'd love to have dinner with you there."

Danicka

He looks so excited, and for a moment that makes Danicka excited, too. He says he's seen it, and that makes him so delighted. Her face slowly changes as he tells her, his mood unchanged, that, well, they killed a vampire who used to eat people in the kitchens. He can see it, too, and remembers then that she's not a werewolf. And she's nearly been eaten, herself, on at least one horrifically memorable occasion. And he just got back from --

"Oh," she says, as he goes on, saying they should still go. They're standing at the passenger side door, Lukas holding it open for her. She doesn't sink down into the seat just yet, but bites her lower lip for a second. Then -- a bit sheepishly, a bit awkwardly, as though her discomfort is a burden -- she says quietly: "Maybe we could go somewhere else?"

Lukas

"Oh." A little crestfallen, and certainly embarrassed, Lukas understands at once that that was way too much information. "Sure."

A hesitation. Then, without anything in the way of explanation, he reaches out and touches her face; the lower lip she'd so recently bitten. His hand lingers a moment, then falls away.

He draws on just about the only other name he'd recognize in the New Orleans haute cuisine circle: "Galatoire's?"

Danicka

He has a larger budget for their Nice Dinner than she (coservatively) estimated.

Danicka smiles at the name and leans over, kissing him with that mouth he just a moment ago was touching. It's the first time she's kissed him since they walked out of the shop where she bought him that shirt -- so only a few minutes, all told. She can tell how badly he wants to please her, impress her, buy her things, give her things, feed her, protect her. She can see easily how crushed he is when he messes up somehow, even a little, as though every decision in their relationship is just as weighted and dangerous as the split-second decisions he has to make it battle. Life or death. Stand or fall.

She realizes that, when he looks at her and when he touches her face, when he seems so miserable if there are bumps in the road they're on. Danicka gets it. Everything matters. Everything is important and everything could make or break his world -- not that he's so black and white about it, no. He just understands slippery slopes. Gravel to avalanche. Things add up. Little things set off bigger things. He's so careful not to make a single misstep, lest it cost him the battle, lest it turn the war, lest it lose him the things that make the war worth fighting.

So she reaches for him, touching his face, too, her fingertips stroking once across his brow, nudging aside the hair that has gotten long while he was off on his hunt.

"I like your hair like this," she tells him quietly, and she may have said this before, may have even said it earlier today, but she says it again anyway. She leans over again, kissing him again, more deeply this time. When it parts, she opens her eyes, sitting back. "Let's go eat."

Lukas

So they go eat. And if nothing else, Lukas is familiar enough with the French Quarter to navigate the narrow streets, to find decent parking, to navigate on foot to the heart of Bourbon Street where Galatoire, self-professed grand old dame that it is, holds court over a number of lesser establishments. They don't have reservations, but it's still early. They queue up the old-fashioned way, waiting for a table on the summery first floor where old-fashioned paddle fans swing slowly over white tablecloths and diners in evening dress. It's still rather warm, and Lukas wears his jacket open.

When they get inside and are seated, Lukas is a little unsure of himself at first, but only for a while. Only until he remembers he's a Shadow Lord, not some ruffian off the street; that his presence here is every bit as earned as deserved as any of their fellow diners, and more so than most. He scans the menu. He spies lamb chops, and that's what he gets. They share canapes for an appetizer, and a few sides that echo both of New Orleans' mothers - the southern and the French. Lukas has seen enough movies to know to start from the outside with the forks; to sit up straight and keep his elbows off the table. They can't afford a bottle of wine, so they get a glass each, and after that glass is half-drained Lukas is relaxing in his seat a little more, relaxing into his dinner, relaxing in the presence of his girlfriend, which he hasn't known for some time.

"I like it here," he says, as they're grazing on the last of their sides, his lamb chops so many bones on his plate. "Maybe we can come for lunch sometime and sit outside, when the weather is cooler."

Danicka

The grace that an older version of herself -- one more cynical and yet even more ethereal -- would have in a place like this is not present in Danicka yet. She does not stroll in and make new friends instantly, immediately. She's been away from New York City a long time now, and she's relaxed into the semi-solitude she has here with the other Kin. She's relaxed into the idea of time for herself, time for a life of her own.

And yet: all of that died when Lukas was gone, and gone so long, that she'd given up. She wasn't happy in the South anymore. Every time she felt anything it was grief, so she tried to feel nothing at all. Every time she thought about her future it was back the way it was, it was back to the suitors her brother would pick, it was back to the life she had always expected and known was coming.

And tonight, every so often, she looks at him -- as they walk in, as they wait downstairs, as they order, as they drink wine and no one even bothers to see their IDs because Lukas scares them so much -- and it doesn't seem real that he's here, and alive, and Everything Is Okay Again. She doubts it, and for Danicka, doubt is never enough. Doubt, almost instantly, turns into disbelief. It jars her every time she's relaxing, laughing at something, smiling at him, and then that shadow falls again: this is what she had. And it was all gone. This is what she hoped for, and then that hope was betrayed. What a fool she was. Hope is for fools. Hope is for those who don't know any better.

That's how it is throughout the evening. She waxes and wanes in and out of that grief, that free-floating anger, that fear, never able to completely shake it. Lukas seems so at ease, so perfectly content, so happy, and every time she tries to meet him in that mood, it feels false to her. It feels like a lie, because right now, for her, it is.

She isn't eating very much. She's sort of quiet. Except sometimes she's letting their legs cross each other under the table, and she's laughing, and sometimes she seems fine. Just... there are cracks.

"Maybe," she muses, moving a piece of something green and beautifully wilted along her plate with her fork tines. She sounds thoughtful -- looks thoughtful. Looks up from her plate and gives him a smile, one of those smiles, her mouth a little cocked and her eyes twinkling a little. "They'll still make you wear a jacket."

Lukas

Sometimes she seems just fine. But then sometimes she seems a little distant, a little sad, a little out of touch - as though perhaps those ghosts of Lizzy's hung about her whispering grief and fury in her ear. Truth be told, it makes her all the more alluring to a stranger's eye; lends a touch of true maturity to what is already a lovely, golden young woman. She already draws appreciative glances from the men and women passing by. Something about her, which they'll never understand, already makes them recognize her as different, other, more. That touch of sorrow seems to magnify whatever it is that sets her apart. Makes her as beautifully tragic as some modern-day Pieta.

If Lukas were not who he is, if he was not her mate in spirit if not in honor and name, he might be all the more drawn to her tonight. But he is who he is, and so

as dinner draws on he too grows quieter. He eats with as healthy an appetite as ever, devouring his lamb chops and much of the sides, though always, always he's trying to heap food on her plate, trying to give her the best morsels and the juiciest cuts; trying to convince her to try some of his lamb, have a little more of the potatoes au gratin, have the last of the bearnaise sauce, go ahead. Conversation winds down, though. He makes a stab at lightness: let's come again for lunch. She responds that they'll make him wear a jacket, and there's a quirk of a smile on his face as he says -- realizing it as he says it --

"I don't really mind. I sort of like ... all this. It's nice."

And so that scrap of conversation slips under their bridge, too. He toys with his wine. He was born in Prague. His parents are very, very Old World. He's no stranger to alcohol, no fumbling virgin at least with this particular brand of scarlet. When he lifts his glass he drains the last of it, down to the dregs, which he sets down and sets aside.

Looking at her across the white tablecloth and the remains of their dinner, then -- and softly: "Co se d je?"

[Czech: "What's the matter?"]

Danicka

Truth be told, some element of that sadness is always there in Danicka's eyes. They can reflect like glass, and people see in her all the things they want to. Themselves, maybe. Beauty. The unattainable thing that they can convince themselves that they own. And it's true -- people are drawn to her. To them. To the danger he represents, to the animalism that they've repressed. To the purity of blood that goes back eons, goes back to pre-history, goes back to a time before the wolves ever needed to tear out the throats of mortals to check them.

And then some, and a few of them older and in this room now, are drawn simply to the fact that here are two young people, and they are in love because that young man keeps trying so hard to share with her, reach her, be close to her -- they imagine it's a struggle for him to sit across from and not beside the blonde girl, to lose all that contact. And they can tell that he's special to her, he's different, because even at her most distant she attends to him. She looks him in the eye. She tries to not be sad, because it makes him sad. She opens up to him like parting a veil, and none of them are allowed to look inside.

But he is.

That makes her smile, small and soft and warm and -- yes -- sad, lingering throughout the rest of her feelings despite the fact that it has nothing to do with Lukas in or out of a jacket. "I do, too. I don't see why we shouldn't have fine things." And there's a touch of pride there, a knowledge of what they are -- he's trying to save the goddamn world from itself. She's been raised to know that any dreams or longings of her own should be, must be, will be sacrificed to serve this war. Of course they are proud. The food in this establishment isn't poison because of young wolves who go out and fight and die and come back limping, scarred, half-mad from what they've seen. Many of the people here will get to their cars and their homes without having their heads torn off and their blood lapped straight from the throat because this wild young pack tore the vampires' heads off first.

Lukas speaks a language next to no one in this city knows, but he still speaks it quietly, like a secret. Danicka's eyes flick to his, sharp and quick as a beast's. She absorbs the question, then looks down. She's silent only a moment, though.

"I just feel strange," she whispers. Her head shakes once. "When I woke up this morning... you were dead." She looks at him, just for a moment, as though to gauge how much these words bring him down. Bother him. "And yesterday, and the day before. And the day before. You've been back just a few hours and it's like nothing's different. Lunch on the porch and conversations about what to wear or how you're weird about not taking advantage of people --" as though it's weird to want to not take advantage of people, or at least let them lie in the beds they make for themselves, "-- and this whole night, which isn't normal but sort of is, and... I don't know how to feel right now. I want to feel happy. I know I should."

She looks at him again, her eyes a bit pained. "I am. I'm so happy I can't... I don't know how to deal with it. And every time I think about how happy I am, how relieved I am, I think about the last few weeks. I want to forget about it and be over it, but... I don't know how to let go of that yet, like flipping a switch. It's like all that was real and this is a lie. I keep expecting to wake up."

Danicka exhales, watching him now. "I got us a room for tonight," she tells him. "As a surprise after the symphony. So we could be alone together after, but... right now that's all I want. I just... want to be alone with you and not wake up. Until I can believe this, and... feel okay. I just want to be with you."

Lukas

It pains him, she can see, when she says he was dead when she woke up this morning. Not the thought of death - no. Not that, which he was taught so long ago to consider nothing more than an inevitability, an already done deal only waiting to come to pass. Not that, but the thought of her, left behind, bereft, grieving. It's not impossible. It's all too possible that he'll leave her behind, nineteen or twenty-nine or thirty-nine or sixty-nine; too soon, no matter when it happens, too sudden, too unforgiving and merciless.

He reaches across their table. There's such a distance there, and those older, genteel folk who still remember what it was like to be young, to be beautiful, to be in love on a summer's night in New Orleans -- they're right: he wants so much to sit beside her, and close even that tiny

(endless)

gulf of space. He restrains himself, though. He takes her hand, and long before she finishes he wants to say let's just go somewhere and be alone, let's go to the symphony some other day.

So he's not disappointed, not by far, when she says she has a hotel for them. A surprise: his eyes do light up a little, even now. A gift. She wants to just be alone, and he's nodding readily, he's squeezing her hand across that white tablecloth. Those remnants of dinner.

"I'd like that," he says quietly. "More than anything. We can leave the tickets at the front desk. Maybe Hana wants to go with her boyfriend, or maybe Benny can scalp them or something, I don't care. We can just be alone tonight, and I'll take you to the symphony some other time."

Danicka

There are Garou who don't mate at all -- or who, on taking a mate, keep them forever at arm's length no matter how many cubs they have together -- because they realize what it would be to ask their kin to love them. They learn, too young or too late, the depth of their own bonds, the inhuman level of closeness that comes with simply being what they are. And they know, because they are taught, how brief their lives are. How could they do that to someone they love? Some Garou love their mates terribly and treat them coolly, so their mates will not love them back. They do not look long into their children's eyes. They refrain from holding them. This is one more sacrifice. This is how they protect them.

Many can't. Whoever Lukas might have been if he'd never met Danicka, or if he'd met her years from now, the man he is right now cannot do that.

And their are kin who prefer this sort of businesslike arrangement. If they do their duty, if they father or bear and raise their children, if they keep house and remain faithful, they are protected. Not provided for -- that's up to them, too. But if they can find a decent enough mate who will leave them alone for the most part, then so be it. A life without love is hardly the biggest sacrifice they could be asked to make. Better than being beaten, hounded, harried, heartbroken.

Many can't. And Danicka was ready for it. Was willing to do that. That was the best option she could think of. Fine, they could have her cunt, her womb, her money, her life, but not her. Not the depths of her. Not her truth. And that was okay.

Was.

He says, like the idea was already on the tip of his own tongue, that they can just... get rid of the tickets. Let the others have them, do what they want. And Danicka doesn't try to be the Good Girlfriend who never cries and is never sad and never has any problems. She just nods, once twice and three times at least, as he holds her hand. "Okay," she says, and they summon their check. She takes a few more bites from the remnants on his plate. She finishes her wine. She's relaxing, slowly, but the truth is what she said -- she just wants to be alone with him. And the truth isn't easy for her, even now. Even with him. She's still... vulnerable. Shaken. Only now it's out in the open. He knows.

So when they go downstairs and he starts to call for a cab, it's not much of a wonder that she wraps her arm around his, lowering it, but holds him. She tucks against his side, and though it's not cool he slips out of his jacket and puts it around her, drapes her in it. They're walking -- the hotel is in the French Quarter too, on 316 Chartres, barely more than two blocks away.

It's nothing like the one in Times Square, or the Lakefront of Chicago. It's just a few stories tall, like most buildings here. From their angle on the street they can't see the courtyard, covered in low bedlike couches, the trees hung with star-shaped lanterns. It's likely nothing like Lukas has ever quite known. The Affinia where she took him that night a year ago was more traditionally styled, and the W is... boutique. Deep neon purples and magenta, contrasts of rich brown and creamy white, hints of gold or green but only where appropriate. Danicka has to show an ID to check in, but of course it's the fake one she's had for most of the time she's been in this city. It helps, too, that Lukas gives that impression of a guy who will start trouble, violent trouble, if you look at him wrong.

But as long as you make this girl happy, he won't touch you. As long as you give her what she wants and don't argue, he'll let you pass by. The monster will keep sleeping as though lulled by a magic flute. So they're given the key card to their room, which in this city is not dozens of floors in the air but just at the top. Their windows don't show much other than some other buildings, or maybe a peek at Canal Street or the river if they peer through other rooftops. They do have a small balcony that overlooks that lovely courtyard, though. They have a suite.

Danicka doesn't even bother taking one of the keycards out of the little envelope to give to Lukas, though. They go up a couple of flights of stairs and arrive, bagless but for her purse and the shopping bag that has his other clothes from earlier inside, at their door. She takes him inside, and looks at him, looks at him looking at the room, exhales, and

puts her hands on his face, drawing him to her to kiss him. Not forceful, not hungry, not rushed, but... lingering. And deep.

Lukas

That sort of wolf, who would push a loved one away for fear of eventual pain, who would maintain a cold distance between himself and his mate just to protect her from heartbreak - Lukas might have so easily become one himself. Would have, perhaps, if he had met Danicka a little later. If he hadn't met her at all.

But he can't even imagine that now. He can't imagine never having run across her that night in early summer, late spring; can't imagine a world in which that serendipity never came to pass. Can't bear to imagine a world in which they did meet, and did love each other that night, only to never see each other again.

There have been lifetimes like that, too. A single burning encounter. A lifetime of aching memory that neither of them would give up for all the world. He can't remember them, though, and anyway: here's the life they live now. Here are their challenges, their quiet griefs and pains, the war they fight - not always against a visible or even nameable enemy - just to be together.
Just like that first night, she takes him to a hotel. Just like that first night, it's a rather nice one. He follows her in, looking discreetly at the furnishings, the architecture. She gets keycards. They go to their room, which isn't a room at all but a suite, and he looks around and he knows now that she's not some over-privileged upper east sider; he knows she works hard for her living. He's impressed by the room. He also worries about the cost, though he tries not to show it. She watches him as he stands in the entryway, looking around, and then

as he's turning to fret to her about the price

she puts her hands on his cheeks, and the warmth and gentleness of her touch quells his questions. He closes his eyes as she kisses him, his brow furrowing. Leans into the kiss like an animal, brow and shoulders and chest; his hands forgotten at his sides, as though he's forgotten their use altogether.

Danicka

Of course he would worry about the cost. He does not, however, worry that he doesn't belong here. He didn't look shyly, nervously around Galatoire's. He knew that people were looking at him, at them, looking at Danicka in this slink of a dress she's wearing, golden from head to toe, her legs exquisitely long, but he did not turn and bare his teeth at any of them. Perhaps he was proud, a little, but it's far more likely that he is coming to know that their eyes mean nothing. That she's his. And perhaps, especially after this last great hunt, he is coming to know that he belongs wherever he decides to be. He is not too poor, too rough, too uncouth to be in a place like this.

With her.

With her hands on his face like this, smoothing into his hair, holding his head there as she kisses him. He leans into her and she presses back against him. The lift of her arms to touch him like this makes the jacket he slung over her shoulders slide unceremoniously to the floor, a soft mound of black with a rustle of silk lining against silk dress. Her feet are nearly between his, her hips holding her body to his, and though he doesn't remember yet what his hands are supposed to be doing when she's kissing him like this, Danicka has retained the use of hers.

She reaches down with one, the other still cupped around the back of his neck, and flicks the deadbolt on the door. She doesn't need to; the door locks automatically. But that metallic thud of the bolt going into place is the only sound they hear now other than the soft rush of the air conditioning and their shared, heated breathing. It's a symbol. A wall to the outside. Now, completely, they're alone.

Lukas

Lukas feels it, that rush of cool satin lining against his forearms, when his newly-acquired coat slips off her shoulders and onto the floor. He doesn't care. He certainly doesn't rush to rescue it, worried about trampling over it later. He doesn't worry about such things, nor about whether or not those symphony tickets are being put to good use or sold for a good price

(though even now the pack might be scheming to find some way to fit every single one of them into that box Lukas has managed to acquire for the night -- because Benny actually enjoys music, regardless of era; because Rolf is happy just to see what it's like; because Hana wouldn't mind sneaking in there and making out with her boyfriend in the back corner)

because in the end they're just things. Material possessions. Just like the furnishings in this fine, trendy hotel. Just like the food, and the furniture, and even the aura of history around the old, respectable restaurant where they ate. Which is also why -- although Lukas is fully capable of enjoying these things, and enjoying them without that sense of spite or subversion that hangs around a typical poor boy wandering into an expensive place -- none of these places have the power to shame Lukas, or make him shy and uncertain or awkward.

They're just things. Danicka, however: she is something else. More. Very, very special to him.

And when she presses her body to him like that, Lukas remembers what a month-plus apart and a few weeks of harrowing paranoia have nearly chased from his memory:

what it's like to kiss a girl,
what it's like when your girl kisses you back,
what it's like when she touches you

just like this.

He lets go a low, soft sound into her mouth. He can't help it. Then as the kiss is fading, slow as a summer sunset, he wraps his arms around her and lifts her gently, effortlessly onto his body. There's no rush here. That much alone is startling proof of both his control and how much he cares about her. How very much he heard her when she said she just wants to be with him tonight. Without pressure. Without the need to perform or fulfill or be anything other than who and what she is.

He walks right over his coat. And the room opens around them. And he tilts his head back and kisses her again, finds her mouth amongst the golden strands of her hair as her hair falls over his face. For a moment, lost in the kiss, he stops moving. Then he resumes, finding his way past the dining area, past the living room furniture, all the way to the window with its diaphanous inner curtains; with its twinned armchairs arrayed invitingly to one side.

And Lukas sinks down on one of these with his girlfriend. She is golden, head to toe, inside to out, like some nymph come down to grace him with her presence. Her limbs seem endless and graceful as summer itself. He looks at her as they sit there, his hands spanning her waist, his eyes dark within their rims of exacting, perfect blue.

"I missed you so," he whispers, and when he says this he doesn't sound seventeen. He doesn't sound like a young man. He doesn't sound like a man at all, but something feral and incapable of deceit, who wears his loyalties on the bristling of his black fur, the raising or tucking of his tail, the position of his head, his ears, every fraction of his body. It is suddenly apparent that Lukas, too, has been putting on a little performance of his own tonight, as thin and truth-grounded as it was: that all is normal, that he is normal, that they are merely youngsters on a date. There is no shred of lie left now. He has not been this honest since he found her in that ancient garden, and she clung trembling to him.

He sits up. He wraps his arms around her, firm and close, and he brings her against him and leans back and

he holds her as tightly as she'd held him earlier, clasps her tight against him, kisses the side of her face and the curve of her neck, kisses her until his mouth finds its own wandering path back to hers.

Danicka

They did not kiss like this in the garden, or in the kitchen, or out on the porch. This isn't a fevered rush, like they're trying to touch each other's souls. This is no playful peck, either, tender and affectionate as they pass by each other. Danicka kisses him like she has no intention of ever ending it, because she doesn't. It is slow, and soft, and on every breath she tastes him. No his tongue, the wine he drank, the lamb he ate right down to the marrow. Just him. The way he breathes. The way his lips move, forming a soft noise here or a sigh there.

She feels his hands finally touch her, arms around her that much thicker and stronger and hotter than she remembers. His hands spreading across her back as though measuring her, or simply trying to touch all of her at once, as much of her as possible. He lifts her and she doesn't instantly, wantonly sling her legs around his waist. She legs him carry her straight. Her shoes dangle and then fall from her feet, twin thumps on the carpet that he walks past as unconcernedly as with his jacket.

For a moment there, lifted up against him, feeling his heart beating through his chest into the center of her body, Danicka thinks he's going to carry her to that perfectly made bed and lay her down. But he doesn't. They walk farther, til they sink downward. She bends her knees to either side of him, settles on his lap, and she never, never stops kissing him. He tips his head back and breathes; she opens her eyes to look at him. To let him look at her.

He missed her.

Danicka says nothing. He saw her shock, her disbelief, her grief, when he came into the garden. He saw her shaking, sobbing relief as she clung to him. Her hands are on his face again, her eyes on him. She's quiet now, even in her relief, and she can look at him slowly. The bridge of his nose. The curves of his mouth. The line of his jaw. She traces parts of him, watching him, til he sits up and pulls her close, smells her right at her throat and kisses her there, kisses her face. Her head tips back to bare her neck to him; her submission seems so natural that for a moment he might miss that it is also deliberate.

When he finds her mouth, her fingertips find his shirt, beginning to unbutton it from the top. To bare him. To strip all this down to what is real, and warm, and animal.

Lukas

Oh, he feels it - both the naturalness of her head falling back and the deliberation of her throat bared to his mouth. His blood rushes with it, heady and sudden: the recognition of the choice she made, which is a recognition of the mind -- and the recognition of what it means, which is a recognition of the soul, the blood, the raw animal spirit that lives in him.

He accepts what she gives him. He does more than that: he folds his arms around her, he holds her, he protects her. He protects what she gives him, because it is precious, because it is her,

and she is his.

That is what the kiss means. That is what every kiss has ever meant. Every line of history between them across every possible lifetime boils down to this: she is his and he is hers. They belong to, and with, each other. It is with a dreamlike slowness that she begins to unbutton his shirt. It's dreamlike, slow, the way he kisses her now, even as his breath hitches in his throat with the brush of her fingers.

Once upon a time, uncertain, he asked if he could before he did anything at all. This time he doesn't ask -- they're so far beyond that now -- but he is still slow, and gentle, and careful, as he slides his hands under that slightly scandalous little dress of hers, which is golden as sunshine, golden as summer. His hands pause a moment over her hips. Then he slides his palms over her bottom, his tongue touching hers like a question, soft, drawing back. He nuzzles her face a moment. He pulls back, looks down: her hands are halfway down his chest, opening his shirt past the lowest border of his sternum.

He looks at her again. He whispers: "Do you want to go to bed?"

Danicka

That means she's his. That means she trusts him -- not to rip out her throat, not to grab her by the neck, not to leash her or choke her. That means surrender, but not like it would if she were Garou and his enemy or someone he was punishing. That means submission, but not because he is Garou and she is his kin to punish or reward as he sees fit. It means she's welcoming him, inviting him, and it's as potent a message as any his animal mind could be faced with.

This is his female. And if he wants to, if he is ready, she will let him in.

Danicka leans into him as his arms wrap tighter around her. She shudders when his hands work up the tight part of her short skirt, hiked all the higher by the way she straddles his lap. She gives a quiet gasp, tightening up and then relaxing, when his hands palm over her ass. That's the first moan she gives him tonight, with her shivering and settling into his touch, her own slowing from distraction on his shirt buttons. She's kissing him deeper in answer to that unspoken question, seeking his mouth even as he nuzzles her cheek. A soft sound, there; a protest at the loss of his kiss.

So she steals one. Finds his lips and kisses him again, losing a breath in it, her hands remembering his buttons, pulling them apart to bare his chest to her while he touches her under her skirt. They breathe; he asks her what he does, and she

shakes her head, her hair in waves and silk tousles around them. She's breathing faster now, but she isn't rushing. "Not yet," she whispers to him, and starts pulling the tails of his shirt out from under his waist. "Polib me znovu."

Lukas

Somehow the shivers and shudders that steal over her at his touch make him all the more tender. They make him want to protect her somehow; they make him wrap his arms all the tighter around her, as though to contain her, hold her together. They kiss, softly and deeply, seekingly, finding and hiding, losing, stealing,

giving, receiving.

No, she whispers. And something else, Czech, closer to his bloodlines and his birth-memories. Kiss me again, she whispers. He finds her mouth; he kisses her in response. And there is no rush tonight. She pulls at his shirt. He straightens his spine. The tails of his shirt slide out from under his belt, and the sussurance against his skin makes him shiver. Makes the tiny hairs on his body stand on end, and his skin prickle with sensation.

Lukas, kissing his lover still, draws his hands out from under her dress again. He runs his palms up her back, explores with his fingers - finds the fastenings, the buttons or the zippers that hold it together; or perhaps there are none. It doesn't matter. He explores until he understands, and understands not only the logic of her dress but the rhythm of her body beneath. It feels like a holy act to him. He draws away from her again with a last touch of his mouth to hers, so gentle.

The armchair sighs as he leans back. Some space reasserts itself. His shirt is open, his skin summer-tanned except for a few stretches where he'd sustained some wound, regenerated, spun himself anew. He undoes whatever fastenings there may be. He undresses her, but so very slowly, pushing the straps off her shoulders one at a time, lowering the loose part of her dress down her body. She can see his chest expand with a slow, long breath as he looks at her. Can see the way his eyes move and glimmer.

Lukas sighs, too. There's a touch of hesitation. Then he puts his hands on her sides, his palms to her waist, his thumbs brushing the lowermost arches of her ribs.

"Poj blíz," he murmurs. "Dovolte mi, abych te cítit."

[The Czech is: "Come closer. Let me feel you."]

Danicka

He's always been so careful with her. From the beginning, when he was somehow intimidated by her, or maybe just afraid of how badly he wanted her -- so he was careful. He asked if it was okay to touch her, he watched her so intently as though the mere grazing of his fingers over her breast could hurt her, terrify her. Even a year ago, not even a Cliath yet, he knew he could be so strong. He knew he could be a danger to those he loved most, because that was when he cared the most, felt things most strongly.

Now he doesn't ask. He pushes her skirt up with his hands, caresses her the way he has countless times now -- in a movie theater, in Benny's car, on his bed in the packhouse, in the garden, on a rooftop -- while he kisses her, as slow as he can as though to draw it out. And Danicka responds the way she so often does, his touch sending tremors of pleasure through her body. She gasps softly, when they shift and she presses herself more firmly against his groin, feels him hard and warm through his slacks.

They're undressing each other with more patience, but no less eagerness, than they have many times now. It isn't as though they haven't seen each other naked in ages. They've showered together, slept together, many times over this long, hot summer. They know each other's bodies. When she unfolds his shirt to bare his torso, Danicka pulls back to look at him, stare at him, and her eyes are limpid with lust. She runs her hands up his sides, over his chest, massages his shoulders right under his collar. Those eyes flicker over the new growth of skin, pale against his tan, and the slightest furrow appears between her brows, tight and aching.

No words, though. Danicka kisses him, the satiny fabric of her dress sliding against his stomach now, tickling his ribs. She knows it -- the way her own warmth translates through the fabric, the way it brushes against her body here and there, intimating what's underneath despite the loose hang of it. She knows the way his eyes glint slightly when he sees her dressed up, which is the same way they glint when her t-shirts pull up or when she bends over wearing cutoffs. She knows the angles and corners and pathways of his lust, and knows, without doubt now, how much of that lust is solely because it's her.

But no longer does he worship her. He is not wary of touching her now. She's not out of his league, above his base desires, untouchable by his rough hands. She's his.

And he's hers. Danicka owns him when she caresses him like this. She arches her back when he runs his hands up her spine. She doesn't help him, whispering to him where to find the clasp. The collar of this dress is sparkling, and at the back of her neck he finds where a small elastic loop circles a small fabric-covered button. He undoes it, her hair swept to one side, and the dress comes away easily. Parts along her back, spreads and smooths down her shoulders and arms. Danicka stops touching him long enough to draw her arms out from the gown, leaning upward.

Her lingerie is simple tonight, but nothing like the plain bras and panties she's usually wearing -- or lack of the former entirely. The satin is a pale peach color, trimmed in black lace along the cups, along the straps. She sits on his lap, legs opened to either side of him, watching him as the dress falls to her hips. He can see the hint of the matching panties around the folds of golden fabric. And she can see the way he breathes, slow and long and deliberate, to look at her like this.

His words make a small flicker of a smile touch the corner of her mouth. Danicka reaches for him, running her hands over his body again, pushing his shirt down his arms. She leans toward him when she does so, letting the upper part of her chest come within an inch of his eyes, his mouth.

"Ješt ne," she murmurs. His shirt hangs on his buttoned cuffs, as though binding him. She licks the side of his throat, quick and soft, like a cat lapping milk -- just once. Her tongue makes its way up to his ear. Her teeth graze his lobe.

Lukas

Lightning flickers through Lukas's eyes: at her touch, at her words, at her refusal, at the loose and subtle way she binds him to her will. Not yet. Young as he is, wanting as he is, Lukas already understands anticipation. He understands, definitely and unequivocally, that it is not his right to rush if she says no, not yet, not now; even if she says not ever.

She doesn't say not ever, though. It's far from that, and he understands this intuitively as well. That's why heat flashes in his eyes. That's why his chest rises sharply under her hands, and that's why a shudder steals down his back as she leans in to nip at him. There's an inch between, which he could easily seal, but she said not yet and so

he waits, his hands on the arms of the chair, his back to its back. He nuzzles against her though, firm and animal and shameless, kissing her neck before she draws back again.

Dark and brilliant at once, his eyes, when there's enough room between for her to see him. Brilliant blue and deep black and that glinting, glimmering heat at the very heart of his pupils, as though his lust or rage or adoration have fused into something luminous and visible as the heart of a star. He never looks away from her.

"When?" he asks her, softly.

Danicka

He's grown. In a year -- more than a year, now -- he's gotten taller. He's filled out more, but he still has the lean and hungry musculature of youth. Right now, the strength and ferocity he'll one day have isn't even a dream. Neither of them can even imagine the way he'll look then, like a veritable wall of power. Lukas is still young, and fresh, and new. He's taken wounds but he isn't scarred from near-death. The only callouses on his hands are from gripping a sword. Danicka thinks he's different, believes it so innocently now when there's almost no innocence to be had for her -- she can't fathom a Lukas that is like so many Shadow Lord Ahrouns, dark and enormous and vicious, fast and violent, thunderstorms in bodies that can bleed.

She thinks his heart is so tender. Sometimes she thinks all of him is, and so he stays young and he stays innocent with her and she doesn't think about what he could become. Might become. All she thinks is how deeply she loves him, how much she wants him, how badly she wants to see him happy and content. The way he looks after ...after anything, really. When they've made each other come with their tongues or hands or both, sleepily staring at each other, sharing a pillow. Or maybe not the way he looks but the way he breathes under her when she lays her head on his chest. The way he smells, a little sweaty and complete, and the way he holds her, even if it's just her hand or his arm thrown over her waist. The way he seems so happy, so gentle, that it makes him ache.

Right now, though, he isn't content. Danicka sits on his lap, in skin and lace and folds of loosened silk, looking at the heat and the hunger in his eyes, and the utter and complete opposite of contentment faces her. A moment ago when she pressed herself against him, she felt him hard in his slacks, his cock a hot and shockingly firm curve against her panties. It made her breath hitch in her throat. He's young, but he doesn't feel like it. He doesn't make her feel young when she senses him against her like that. She feels older, sees him older.

No. Not older.

Timeless.

Danicka touches his face again as he asks her, sounding the way he does, looking at her the way he is, when. She keeps her eyes on his and rolls her hips forward again, moves against him again. Danicka gasps softly, a quick pant of mingled need and relief. She doesn't say a word.

Lukas

Danicka has no real answer, and in truth Lukas did not expect one. He knows the answer:

when she's ready. When he's ready. When the time is right.

That's been the answer since the beginning of their self-imposed celibacy. Their decision to start anew, wipe clean the slate, become virgins again for each other. There's no deadline, and never was one; not the third date, not the fourth time she slept over, or the fifth week or the sixth month or ... any of that. Just this: when they're ready. When it's right.

It feels right, tonight. It felt right when they left their fancy dinner, skipped their fancy show, came straight here to their fancy hotel, except where they are matters less than the fact that they are here together. She is aching close to him. He feels connected to her already. When she moves, the same pleasure flares in both their eyes. She gasps and he sighs, his head falling back against the armchair, his eyelids flickering down a bit. It gives him a languid, wanting look. He is languid and wanting, held at bay by her word and by the subtle tension between them.

When she relents a moment, he leans forward. His hands still cradling her hips, his arms still tangled in his shirt, he begins to nuzzle at her neck. He kisses her there; rubs his face slowly and heavily against her; bites gently at her shoulder, holds for a moment. Lets go, and kisses her again, soothing that bite away. When he inhales, his chest touches hers for a moment, her bra the only thing between. He straightens his spine: presses more fully against her for a second, finding her eyes with his.

Those eyes close again. He kisses her mouth now, full and deep, drinking her like she's drenching him, like she's wine, like she's lifewater.

Danicka

No answer is an answer. A different kind of answer.

Her hands keep coming back down to his chest, to the skin she's bared. She keeps touching him like she's never seen him before, and her breathing keeps getting faster, higher. Every time the thin slip of fabric between her legs, warmed by her own body heat, brushes against the fabric of his slacks, she gives a soft pant.

One strap of her bra slips down her shoulder. Lukas pushes up against her, watching her, and sees her shudder slightly before he kisses her like that.

Even when they're kissing, she gasps into his mouth, and there's a rhythm to the way she moves now. Danicka keeps lightly, lightly stroking herself against the bulge in his pants, never sinking down to press herself to him, never grinding. Her hands move over his skin, reveling in the way he's formed, the physical remainder of all kinds of trial, all kinds of suffering, all kinds of strength. If she weren't sitting on his lap, would she have stripped him naked by now?

They kiss, and she moves and she shudders when he presses against her, but then

Danicka pulls away. Her eyes find his almost as soon as they open, dark and verdant. She lifts herself up, hands to his shoulders for a gentle leverage, and then swings her leg and slides off of him. That dress, all gold satin, shivers to the floor when she stands. For a moment, that's all she does. She stands before him, down to scraps of satin and lace, one strap fallen on her arm and the thong he felt under her dress visible now to him. Her eyes are watching his face, his eyes, where they travel, what they see, how he reacts.

And she turns, slowly and invitational, walking across the plush and vibrant suite to the expansive bed with its cream and chocolate covers. She bends one leg at the knee and presses it into the mattress, crawling onto that bed from the foot of it. But she doesn't turn over. She doesn't roll onto her back and lean against the pillows, hair all a bright halo around her. No, she climbs onto that bed and rests on all fours and

turns her head to look at him over her shoulder. And that's when he can see the darkness of the satin, the wetness between her thighs.

Lukas

The moment Danicka pulls away, Lukas's eyes snap open. That languid look is gone, replaced in entirety by a new, animal alertness. He watches her, his head tilted ever so faintly to one side, careful and a little wary: he watches her get up, he watches her swing her leg over his lap. His hand comes up and he helps her, his palm to her forearm; incongruously gentlemanly.

The look in his eyes is anything but gentlemanly. The look in his eyes is all heat, all lust, as that elegant, sinful little dress of hers slides right off her body. His lips part. His eyes go dark. He breathes quietly, but he's breathing harder all the same, quite literally panting at the sight of all that skin, all that flesh, his female baring herself to him.

His hand strays over his own body. Skims the chest, skims the abdomen - all those inches of territory she grazed over moments ago. He touches himself through his slacks, half-mindless, rubbing the flat of his palm over the curve of his cock as he watches her body move with every breath, every motion.

But then she walks away from him. And he's suddenly, snappingly alert again, attuned to every moment, every turn of the game. He can read enough of her body language to know it's not a dismissal, and he sits up straight; leans forward when the walls of the suite threaten to block her from sight. Framed through the bedroom door, he watches her approach the bed. He swallows; she slides her knees onto the bedspread. She stops on all fours. He holds his breath.

She looks at him over her shoulder. She sees him framed through that same doorway, the colors and light of the living room subtly different from that of the bedroom. She sees him rising silently to his feet, feral in his balance and the swing of his gait. He comes through the door and now they share the same light, the same colors. He leaves his slacks at the door. His shirt, trapped at his wrists, takes a little longer. He never looks away. When he's down to his underthings as well he comes to the edge of the bed, puts his hands on her hips, buries a groan against her back as he nuzzles his way up the cleft of her spine; nips the wing of her shoulderblade ever so gently between his teeth.

He leaves her bra on. Maybe he's forgotten, or maybe Lukas has learned just enough maturity, just enough decadence, to want to see her wear it a little longer. His fingers comb her panties down from her hips, though; all the way down to her knees. All the way down to the bed.

Lukas takes another step forward. He brings his body against hers, and now his boxer-briefs are the only thin layer between them. She can feel the heat and weight of him, hard beneath his underwear. He can feel her wetness soaking through the cotton. He shudders, but he's not shy. He presses against her, grinds against her, gasps over her shoulder, seeks her mouth.

Danicka

Waiting for him on the bed, Danicka watches Lukas as he takes his hand off of his groin. As he rises to his feet, his hands going not to the cuffs of his sleeves first but his belt, the fastenings of his slacks. That shirt, cream-colored and brand new, hangs around his lower back, attached at both wrists like a cloth chain. The sight of him like that, undressing himself in the doorway while he stares at her, makes her heart pound, makes her pupils dilate.

Her back arches slowly, her shoulders lowering slightly for a moment. It seems unconscious, an aching movement borne out of longing and not calculation. He's taking too long, and then her spine is smooth out, and his shirt is coming undone, falling behind him along with his slacks.

Lukas brings heat with him, a wall of it. It curls and coils like flame, licking outward, and it's rage as much as it's lust. When he grabs her hips it pulls her back an inch and he doesn't even seem to mean for that to happen but he's so strong, and right now she's so very, very pliant. Danicka just gasps, arching her back again to bring herself closer to him as his mouth travels up her spine.

Those hands of his palm over her ass, stripping the thong down her thighs. She makes this sound, barely audible, a shivering little moan. A purr. Her right knee slides up the bed in answer, working her ankle out of her panties. Her hair is hanging down now, and she isn't looking back at him anymore. She's got her eyes closed, her mouth open to breathe, her body already rocking slightly with the way he's grinding against her. Unbound, she opens her legs wider, and his mouth touches her jawline, her cheek, catches the edge of her lips. Danicka presses back against him, and this time her moan is voiced, needful, almost a whine.

He can already taste the slightest sheen of sweat on her shoulders.

Lukas

There's something decadent about this, something heedless and feral and hypnotic. They move like they're joined. They breathe like they're connected. Every time she rubs against him both of them gasp. He's found her mouth but they haven't the presence of mind to kiss, so he just presses his mouth against the corner of hers, and then to her cheek, to her neck.

To her shoulder. Where he grips with his teeth, biting her firmly, unafraid for once of hurting her or frightening her. She grinds against him and there's so little between them, so little that his mind warps with the possibilities. He makes a sound against her skin; it's a growl, low and wanting, coming straight from the depths of his torso.

He doesn't need to ask her if he can, this time. He doesn't need to ask if she wants to, or if he's allowed to, or how or why or when or --

he doesn't need to ask. He can read her readiness in every winding twist of her spine, every shudder of her shoulderblades, every gasp that sussurates through her throat. He can read it in the hammering of her heart against his hand where his hand cups her breast. He can read her readiness in her scent and her heat and the way she keeps rubbing her wetness onto him, marking him as hers, hers, marking him as made to mate with her. Made to fuck her.

He pushes off the bed abruptly, and he straightens up long enough to strip her bra off entirely. It ends up another lace scrap on the bed or the floor. Lukas comes down over his lover, then, the both of them naked, shameless, golden with youth and strength and health. He pushes his boxerbriefs down. They're both sweating already. The cotton sticks to his body, catches at the line of his obliques, and then it's off and he's pressing his bare cock against Danicka's body, rubbing against her wet pussy, sliding himself between her thighs over and over in blatant imitation and intimation of fucking until

they're both slick with her slick, wet with her wet, both filthy and gasping and his arms are on either side of hers, he's covering her, he's literally all over her, kissing her neck, biting her shoulder again, holding her like that.

"Do we need a condom?" It turns out he has a question after all. His voice is low, rough with desire, he can barely put words together. "Or can I just -- "

-- he can't even put it into words. The very thought of it blows his mind.

Danicka

Special. She wanted it to be special. After all that waiting, all that heartbreak, all that tension and confusion when he came to New Orleans, after the furious way they kissed at that nightclub on her birthday, after the way she laid naked beside him, after their passion even on their First Date, after kissing her way down his body in the garden, after squirming out of her panties and teaching him to pleasure her, after touching each other under a blanket on the Fourth of July, after all that,

she wanted it to be special. Different. New, even though neither of them are. He's known her and that girl back in Stark Falls and some girl in New York who just reinforced his sense that this is it, that Danicka is it, and this isn't the hundred or two hundred experiences he might have had if he'd never met her, but he isn't new. Neither is she. They aren't virgins and they aren't newlyweds but they tried so hard to just feel innocent for awhile. They waited so long, because the wanted it to be special.

Now they're here. This morning she thought he was dead. They were going to go to the symphony but she just wanted to be alone with him, private with him, escape the world and all that pain with him... and they've turned into beasts. It's not just heedless, it's filthy. They sweat. She teases him and he rubs his cock through his pants and she ends up on all fours in bed, inviting him wordlessly to come fuck her like that, rough and animal.

And it is very, very special.

Danicka makes a sound, a gasp that's partially a moan, arching her back to squirm her ass against his cock while he growls. They both know he doesn't need to ask. He's pushing down his boxer briefs, holding her breast through the satin til he finally just undoes the two tiny clasps and lets it drop her wrists, and she keeps rocking back against him, gasping for him, moving her hips like she's trying to work herself right onto his cock then and there.

Their faces are close. Their hair sticks together, dark and light. She still has her eyes closed, reveling in sensation but also trusting, trusting him so much she doesn't even have to watch him. They didn't use a condom the first time. Or second. Or... third, that first night. He asks if they need one. Danicka shudders and pushes back against him, and this time

she's the one that growls. Snarls, low and demanding, pressing against him. If it's an answer, it's just one word.

Now.

Lukas

There's something bare and almost brutish about this. Something naked and honest, more honest perhaps than they've ever been with each other.

This is who they are at their core. This: hot, sweating, animal, snarling into the thick air of late summer. He asks a question. She growls at him. He doesn't wait any longer; doesn't need any further clarification or encouragement. His balance over her shifts. He reaches back, grips himself at the base, grips her by the shoulder with his teeth and

growling back at her, growling like an animal, like the beast he is,

enters her in one smooth slide.

It nearly melts his mind. His teeth open. He drops his brow to her shoulder; groans open-mouthed against her back, shuddering through and through as she takes him in. Then his arms are braced on either side of her again. Then he's kissing her again, nuzzling the side of her face, kissing her with lips and tongue unseeing, his hands moving to cover hers on the bed as he, covering her with his body, begins to move inside her -- solid, steady, powerful.

Danicka

It's been a long time for both of them. Eight months or more. And there's nothing they've done that compares to this. Truthfully, not even the way they made love last year compares to this. Danicka feels so hot inside, like there's a fire burning in the middle of her, right in her core. She's sweating, she feels Lukas sweating with her. Every time he breathes she can feel his chest against her back. His arms brace hers. She can't think clearly, can't think of anything except getting him inside of her, and then

he's there, fitting himself to her, biting and snarling and groaning. She clenches up almost immediately; she's grown tight, tighter even than the first time with him, and the speed of it grounds her suddenly, gives her an alertness that comes not from pain or discomfort but a sort of neutral shock. Her eyes are open now, rolling back for half a second; her vision fades for a moment and her elbows buckle her under him. She thinks, for a moment, that she's too hot to stay awake, that she's going to pass out just from ...sex.

No. Not just that. All the pain and fear and grief, too. All the sleepless nights, and all the times her appetite fled. She knows she isn't weak, doesn't feel weak, but she's... weakened. Wounded. And so he enters her, and she shudders, faltering like she does, dizzy with lust and with adoration and with simple vulnerability.

She says his name, and it's a moan of pleasure and a plea for help at the same time, but mostly it's just recognition. That it's him. That he's there. She knows him. She knows him for what he is right now, and she needs him. Her eyes begin to close again. Her fingers curl and clutch at the bedspread. Danicka turns her head towards him, whimpering. She says his name again, moving herself slowly back against him.

Lukas

Immediate. Raw. That's how he thought to love her - filling her at once, moving in her with all his already-considerable strength and force. He would never have dared it a year ago, the first time they made love. He likely didn't even know such a thing existed; could barely conceive then of all the many ways a man and a woman could make love.

He's still only made love a bare handful of times. Not even that. But he's been with her so long now, and they've had each other so many other ways. He knows now sex isn't a singularity, isn't a single and irrefutable statement, but a conversation. A communication. A connection truer and more unmistakable than any their tongues or words are capable of.

And he thought to begin this conversation one way - rough, almost - but

there's that sudden stillness in her, that sense that her arms nearly give way, and instantly Lukas stops moving as well. He's so deep inside her, and she's so hot, and he thinks he might die. He lifts one hand from the mattress, though. He wraps his arm around her, tightly, holding her up so that even if her elbows did buckle, even if she did lose all strength, she wouldn't fall. She wouldn't hurt herself.

He holds her. She says his name. She sounds so vulnerable then; his heart caves in on itself. He bends his head past her shoulder as she's turning to him; he nuzzles her slow and firm, and all the while he's buried in her, literally pulsing with arousal held quiveringly in check.

When she says his name a second time, he says hers back to her. "Danicka," like this is the one and only logical response, the only answer. And then: "Jsem tady. Já jsem s vámi."

He still has one hand on the bed. He shifts that hand now, seeking connection. He finds her hand; his fingers work under her hand, slip under her palm and between her fingers. Cushions her weight against the bed, as though he would lift her, hold her, keep her utterly safe if he could. Her fingers curl; his spread, let hers between, then close.

"Ano," he whispers, as she slides herself

ever so slowly

back against him. His breath catches. He can't stand it; he bites her shoulder again, can't seem to stop doing this, grips her firmly and gently in his teeth. Muffled, gasping, "Pomalu. Pomalu, lásko."

[Czech: "I'm here. I'm with you."

"Yes -- slowly. Slowly, baby."]

Danicka

The first time they made love, Lukas barely dared to touch her without asking first if it was all right, if she was all right, if this, between them, was okay. He knew it wasn't. He knew he was trespassing when he smelled her walking by him, when his eyes were drawn after her, when his body, mind, and spirit were all lit up with recognition and desire. Every time he kisses her, tells her he loves her, every time he puts his hands on her, he knows it isn't okay. There are laws about this. He breaks the Litany every time he moans into her mouth, cups her breast in his hand, feels her warm and languid and welcoming against him.

There are other laws, and they are deeper. They come from nature and not the tongues of ancient Garou lawgivers trying to make sense of a brutal and painful universe. They come from the homelands, where his ancestors and hers both sleep, curled amongst stars and thunderstorms. Kinfolk are not territory to be trespassed upon. Souls meet in multiple lifetimes. Somewhere beyond physical reality and the illusion of time, he and she are always together. They share a den, they share warmth, they share meat. He feels it when he covers her heartbeat with his hand and feels it thumping in harmony to the pulse in his wrist.

She feels it when she is in that twilight just before or just after sleep, always more elusive to her because she is cut off from the spirit world in this life, as he is not. When Danicka dreams, she is safe from doubt and lies and fear, and she knows who she is. Who she was. What that means, when Lukas is with her.

And Lukas, with her now, pushes his cock into her for the first time in over a year and she almost swoons. It isn't just that it's been eight or more months since she's had sex at all. It isn't just that she's tight, she's so turned on she can't breathe, it's not just that finally, finally he's with her. It's because it's him. It's because it's been over a year. It's because for a moment there he is so raw, so strong, so rough, and it turns her on so much that she thinks she's going to die.

She wants him to know not to stop. Not to collapse in worry, fearing for her. She wants him to know to stay.

And she wants him to fuck her.

He catches her, first. Holds himself tense and throbbing inside of her, but he wraps his arm around her and holds her where she is, holds her close to him, while she breathes. And she does -- deep breaths, clearing her vision for a moment, trying not to collapse in on herself. She breathes while he nuzzles her, murmurs her name to her, reassures her in a voice that is, truthfully, as dark and rough as that first hard stroke into her. It inexplicably but deeply comforts her, and not just because of the words he says. It's his voice, still ragged and animal, and the fact that she would know his voice anywhere. She thinks she would even know him if he howled, and she can't imagine how she could know a thing like that.

Danicka moves her hand gently atop his, their fingers alternating on the bedspread. His other hand holds her breast, holds her body up, keeps her near. They twist a bit with it, and that's fine. It sinks her deeper onto him. She gasps, and that gasp flows into a groan as their bodies meet. Lukas puts his teeth into her, right where the muscle is solid, not where tendons lace carefully together, not where he could pinch or harm her. Danicka, slowly as he pleads with her to be, slides away from her. Back again. For that last inch, she thrusts, firm and hard against him. Then slowly away. Grinding, achingly slow, back to him again. Every time they meet it's a new sensation. She's making sounds now without thinking, without realizing it even, gasps and moans and small whimpers that shudder through her.

Lukas

And it's that last inch - that last rough, sliding inch where she rocks so firmly back against him that it drives a short, half-startled groan out of him - that's another communication all its own. Lukas knows then that his

mate; is he even allowed to think of her as such? He's not; he knows he's not, not by any of the laws of the strange and savage and secret society they live in. And yet he is: he knows he is, but every last one of the laws of the strange and savage and primordial they live by. So: his

mate; he knows that his mate is ready for him, that she is strong in her own right, she will not collapse or falter or fall into fear; she will not be overwhelmed if he

seizes her a little more firmly in his teeth. If his hand grasps a little harder at her breast, at her side, down the sleekness of her stomach to cup over her cunt. If he set his knees a little more firmly against he mattress, and flexed his fingers into the bedspread. If he started fucking her, meeting her stroke for stroke, hitting her firm and deep there on their shared bed, panting on every thrust, and then grunting on every thrust, and then groaning, rough and raw, buried against her shoulder, eyes shut, savage, sweating.
They wanted it to be special, when they gave themselves to each other again. When they took each other again. And it is special. It's right: it resonates with who they are, who they've always been behind the veil of ages and lives. When he loves her like this, fucks her like this, he doesn't feel young and unsure. He doesn't feel half-overwhelmed with a thousand different worries at once. He thinks very little. He feels. He knows:

she is his mate, and

they are made for this.

Danicka

Lukas is different tonight. She wonders if it's the journey he was on, the hunt. She wonders if it's her that's different, and she knows that's at least partly true. She wonders if he knows, if he can see himself clearly at all, if he realizes that he's changed. She wonders if this is changing him, right now,

and she knows it is.

Danicka lets out a cry, quite suddenly, as he holds her tighter, massaging her tit in his hand, moving into her more forcefully, stroking his hand down to her pussy to touch her there. It isn't a cry of pain or fear or surprise. She clutches at the bedding, at the pillow just beyond her hands, elongating her spine to work herself back against him, meet him there.

She doesn't know where she is anymore. That they are in the W, in New Orleans, that they are young, that there are packmates and friends outside this room. All she knows is this, right now, and how incredible he feels. She opens her hips a little wider, invites him deeper, groaning as she gives herself over.

Lukas

They are different, tonight. They are not quite the boy and the girl who fumbled their way through encounter after encounter in this endlessly lazy summer. They are not the young and inexperienced pups they were when they first made love a year and some-odd months ago -- and they were inexperienced then, the both of them. They are so far from the children they were, a lifetime ago in New York City.

Tonight, all that history seems to pale. Who they are in this life. What they've seen. What they've done. It all blurs away, sears away in the singular, focal burn of this moment.

This moment, and this act, becomes a single unalienable truth. They are different tonight: they are themselves tonight. And it changes them.

She clutches for the pillow just beyond her reach. He is bent over her, curved over her, powerful and motile, in motion, a flexion carried through his entire body to bring himself into her again and again.

She rocks back against him as he drives against her. They are both moaning. He is touching her, stroking her with his fingers as he strokes into her, and his touch is heavy; the way he fucks her is heavy, solid, all but slamming into her, the momentum of his motion rumpling the bedspread beneath their hands and knees.

"Harder," he whispers, harsh with want. "Take it. Fuck me, baby."

Danicka

She clutches at anything, bedspread or pillow, and what her fingers find, she digs them into. It braces her against him, because he is not being tender, slow, gentle right now. She doesn't want him to be, was in fact afraid he might be and would flinch in wariness if she told him to give her more.

The truth is that even a year ago, Danicka was... not really an inexperienced pup, and none of the moments she's had with Lukas this summer have been fumbling for her. She knew how to be patient with him last year. She knew how to teach him to please her on his little flop-bed in the packhouse. She wasn't afraid to -- to be crude -- clean his cum from his cock with her own panties that night on the roof. It's been a very long time since she was a virgin, and a girl who likes to get away with breaking the rules can get up to a lot in a couple of years of believing that she will never have what she really wants, that love is a lie, that she may as well do as she likes before she's mated to someone who will tear her throat out for it.

She had two condoms in her little purse that night. She never had any intention of fucking her prom date. She'd lied to her employers and her family both so that neither would be expecting her but neither would turn her away. She was free. She had no plans, no expectations. She could do anything she liked, fuck anyone she wanted, take whatever drugs or drink were offered and jump off a building if that seemed like the thing to do.

Virginity, for women, is this fetishized, idolized thing. To be pure. To be innocent. To be naive, even, unsure. And if that's what it is, above and beyond the act of penetrative sex, then Danicka has never been a virgin. Danicka, raised in a house with as much violence as nurturing, has never been innocent, or naive, or unsure.

But she is pure.

That's in her blood. That's in her secret, darkly gleeful savagery. That's in the way she snarls when he fucks her, digging claws into the bedding, arching her back and lifting her ass and taking everything he gives her, using it, working herself off on him with luxurious, decadent ...dominance. That's there, too, and it's as pure as her blood, comes from her blood and that strange, twisted mixture of viciousness and care she was raised with.

The first time they made love he was a virgin, but he wasn't innocent, either. He'd killed. He'd hunted. He was being taught lessons on controlling a pack, on manipulating with favors. Oh, honor, too, and enough of that to offset some of the less savory parts of being a Shadow Lord, but not even Istok could have shielded him from everything else, all the other mentors who might have only taught him to kill or be killed, dominate or submit. He wasn't innocent, and he has fumbled, but she has always been there to guide him, just as he's always been there to give her some touchstone, some harbor, some... home, in the midst of the chaos she seems borne from and forever tied to.

And in that, they will both perhaps always be virgins. She's never loved before, never really felt safe before. He settles her. She sleeps more deeply when he's beside her, and her dreams are less red, less frightening, though no less wild. He asks her sometimes: okay? and she sometimes does not use words to answer. She holds him, or touches his hair, and it is okay. He is softer, and he is devoted, but no less wild. No less dangerous. Just beloved.

Danicka moans, long and loud and almost a wail, squirming against him while he mutters to her, speaking half to himself, half to her. Her hair is all over her shoulders, her neck, and she gives a toss of her head, swinging it all to one side, baring the side of her throat, gasping as he plays with her cunt. It clenches around him, sudden, hard, tight. It makes her moan again, shuddering. She isn't speaking to him. She has no words to answer him with. It doesn't make her any more distant. She is there with him, right there, but she is so far away from the rest of the world that right now the only thing keeping her here, keeping her sane and human and earthly,

is him.

Lukas

Danicka has no words with which to answer Lukas, and Lukas is rapidly losing the last of his. The squirm of her body - the clench of her cunt - his mind nearly blows apart. She tosses her hair in a spray of gold and his mouth is at her neck immediately, kissing that newly revealed part of her like he's been waiting for this, waiting just for this.

And all the while he's still inside her. He's still fucking her in those short, deep, savage strokes, snapping his hips against hers, all the impetus of motion coming from his loins, the base of his spine. His shoulders are braced over her. His chest heaves for breath, but otherwise he's a solid wall behind her, over her. The sky could fall, he thinks, and he wouldn't stop fucking her. He wouldn't stop loving her. He wouldn't stop

protecting her, just like this, surrounding her, holding her, filling her.

"Hold on to me," he urges her, whispered, panting. His hand leaves her clit for a moment. He grasps blindly at the winding muscles of her stomach, her side; at her breast, and then at her arm. Tries to get her to put her hand on his neck. In his hair. Hold on to him, somewhere or somehow, as though to fuse them more perfectly. "Hold me," again,

because he can't hold her anymore. Because that hand that was between her thighs is coming down to the bedspread now. He's planting both hands on the mattress, fixing his weight on all fours, squaring himself. He wants to give it to her. He wants to fuck her, and he's biting kisses against her neck, the side of her jaw. The sheets twist between his fingers. Their bodies are slapping together. His breath is hot and harsh, and he is

quite plainly put

pounding her now. Hammering her from behind, not even trying to hold back his groans now - nearly shouting open-throated every time his cock slides home, every time her cunt clenches, every time she moans, every time she spreads her legs and rocks herself back and takes him deeper, takes everything he gives her, takes it.

Danicka

It's possible that no one has enjoyed fucking Danicka as much as Lukas does. It's certain that she's never enjoyed sex this much, never felt this good, never wanted it this badly. It's never been the way it is with him. It doesn't hold a candle. And maybe her mind is too charged with pleasure right now to remember or compare, but the truth is that later on she'll think about it, think about him and this and everything before, and she'll feel the same way. It's never been like this. It's never been this good.

At first he moves her arm and she startles, uncertain, leaning harder onto her other hand where it laces with his. But he begs with her, gasps for her to hold him, like he needs it as much as he needs to come, and her hand finds his hair, runs through it, clenches gently but

still, clenches at his hair, fingertips rubbing his scalp, holding him just as savagely as he fucks her.

And that's when she starts snarling, growling, bucking back against him, saying the filthiest things her mind can dredge up. Where there were no words there's suddenly a torrent of them, each one more raw than the last, and all of them demanding. She fucks him at her own pace now, faster, groaning in between words, all but falling to her elbows on the mattress. He's never seen her like this before, she wasn't even sure this side of him existed, but he knows she's close.

Partly because she is, at the moment, ordering him to fuck her, fuck her tight pussy, fuck her til she comes on that hard cock, yes, fuck, yes. She almost screams at the end, losing hold of his scalp, grabbing his arm, his shoulder, falling forward on her arms and half-burying her face in the pillows, squirming, moaning, working in circles on him, coming, while he's so deep inside of her she can't even feel anything else, nothing but pleasure so intense that she can't even control what her body is doing right now.

Lukas

Lukas has never seen her like this before. It'd be a lie to say it doesn't surprise him, doesn't startle him just a little bit. It'd also be a lie to say he doesn't like it, because he does. He fucking loves it. He loves fucking her, and he loves her like this, raw and wild and filthy and,

yes,

dominant. Which is not something he would've ever imagined her being when they met on that street in May. Which is not something he can even easily imagine her being now, except: she is; she's fucking him right back like he's made for this, made for her pleasure, made to pleasure her, made to make her come.

And when she comes,

when she buckles down on her elbows like that, he goes right with her. He's heavy against her back, weighing her down, wrapping his arms tight around her and bearing her down to the mattress. Her weight is still on her knees, raising her hips to him as though giving herself up to him. Offering her cunt up for the fucking. And he, of course, takes what she offers, gladly: he fucks her relentlessly, quite hard, biting her again, snarling against her shoulder, pounding her pussy in deliberate, heavy slams of his body as she cries out, screams, writhes, coils through that singular torrid orgasm.

And when she's done -- when she's finally come down from that dizzying high -- he slows. He forces himself to slow, to still. Lukas is entirely wet with sweat. He's wet from her, too: her slick smeared between her thighs, on his balls, all up and down the shaft of that cock he's fucking her with. Slowly now. Heavy, dragging, out and then in again: he slides home one more time and he holds himself right there, as deep inside her as he can reach, so close to the edge himself that his breath is shuddering in his lungs; his cock is throbbing inside her. His arms are wrapped around her torso, and he can't bear it, he can't take it but he takes it anyway, this moment of maddening silence while he waits to see

if she can go on. If she can handle it, if he were to simply push her down now, mount her, nail her to the bed, fuck his orgasm out into her.

Danicka

Odd to think of a kinswoman, particularly a Shadow Lord kinswoman, being dominant at all. Odd to think of her being dominant, daring to be dominant, with a Shadow Lord Ahroun. Odder still to think of her like this, bent over, clutching at bedspreads, screaming, and being ... dominant. Nothing about her, from person to posture, suggests it's even possible. But it's more than possible; it's true.

The first time he made her come, Lukas tried to hold her so tightly, as though all her shaking and whimpering was going to destroy her, break her apart. He seemed so worried for her, almost -- how could a person, especially one so fragile-seeming, survive such a thing?

It's easier this time. He follows her but it isn't to try and hold her together, tighten around her, restrain her -- it's to be close to her. It's to fuck her. Give himself over to her, snarling and biting and grunting, as much as she gives herself up to him, moaning and trembling and losing her mind.

She is against the covers like a broken doll, gasping as she even starts to come down, rocking her hips back against him despite him having slowed, nearly stopped. Every time she slides her pussy along his cock she clenches up again, shuddering with the pleasure that sensation causes. And Lukas holds himself still, the restraint nearly blowing his mind, and Danicka just whines at him, squirms on him, bucks a little.

"Don't stop," she pants for him, fucking him a little slowly, groaning low in her throat. "Baby, don't stop."

Lukas

It's never been like this before.

It's never been this raw; it's never been this savage. It's never been this good. And she's collapsed beneath him, and he holds himself still, and he's waiting for some sign that she's all right, she's okay, she can keep going, and

she gives him more than that. Don't stop, she says, and it's a complaint; it's an order. He pants a laugh over her shoulder. He kisses her neck, hard, and then he reaches over her head to find her hand again; grip it beneath his.

"Okay," he breathes. He moves - he gasps - his hand closes harder on hers, and he shifts over her, resettling his weight. It's that word again, the one he likes so much: "Okay, baby."

He's looking for her mouth. He wants to kiss her mouth as he's starting to fuck her all over again. No, the truth is: he always wants to kiss her mouth. He always wants to be just like this with her, alone with her, inside her, hidden away where no one else can find them.

His free hand finds her cunt again. And he groans to feel how wet she is; groans to feel her taking his cock like that. He's had time now to learn what she likes. Learn how to touch her. He touches her, stroking her gently, slowly, an utter counterpoint to the way he's fucking her in seconds: as hard as before, as fast, their bodies slapping together, the heavy bed shuddering against its headboard.

Danicka

She can't kiss him. Can't, won't, doesn't remember what kissing is, can't breathe, take your pick, but her head hangs and she groans as he moves in her again, while he kisses her wherever he can reach her, throat or shoulder or back, gripping her hands and driving into her again. Danicka gasps. He's speaking, but she only had enough language for that complaint, that order, that plea, and she can barely understand him. Her mind is at high tide. Her body is still pulsing with orgasm.

Oh, she shrieks when his fingers find her cunt. She squirms away from him, thrashes almost, tossing her head. It's inhuman, animal, the way she reacts. The way she starts begging him, no real words coming out or forming into sentences but begging him no, no, baby, oh god, which still sounds like pleasure though she's shaking from overstimulation. He's gentle but she can't bear it, can't bear him touching her right now, pants in relief when he stops,

moans in relief when he pins her down to the bed and starts giving it to her again. Her hips lower; her legs spread. She lets her limbs relax, lets her body go limp, not because there is nothing to be done but wait but so... so she can feel him. Feel nothing but him. Her head turns on the bedding.

This time when he leans for her mouth to kiss her, she kisses him back, swallowing his groans.

Lukas

The balance between them tips so fluidly and so seamlessly. Considering the sheer supremacy Danicka wielded moments ago, pounding herself to orgasm on her lover's cock, snarling at him to fuck her, fuck her harder, make her come as though that were Lukas's prime and only purpose in life -- it's almost unbelievable that she's so pliant now. Considering there was something almost helpless in the way he fucked her moments ago, groaning on every stroke, overcome but literally unable to stop -- as if her will had indeed possessed him -- it's almost shocking that now,

now he's touching her beyond what she can take; he's making her twist and shriek beneath him until he finally relents. She seems so relaxed, then. She seems to give herself up so thoroughly. He, on the other hand: he rears over her; plants his elbows on either side of her. The cords in his shoulders bunch and roll. He grasps her by the hip, pins her down like that, and her legs are falling wider open as he's thrusting between them. When he looks for her mouth again she gives it to him. She takes the snarl right out of his mouth. He reaches under her body to wrap her torso in his arm. It's like he wants to surround her as thoroughly as possible; to insinuate himself in every pore; to permeate her consciousness as thoroughly as she has his. He wants her to be his, his, only his, and

he wants to be hers. Only hers. He wants to give himself up to her somehow. This is the only way he knows.

And his skin is so hot now; he's a blast furnace behind her. His breath is hot and fast. His heart hits his ribs like a sledgehammer. She can feel it through the wall of his chest, and through her own back. He's just hitting the peak of his stride, and let's be honest: Lukas is well and truly fucking his mate now, hammering her to the bed, bouncing the springs beneath them. There's such strength in him already, a shocking raw power that he's never quite dared to unleash like this, but

tonight is different. They're changing tonight, moment by moment; stepping into some foreshadow of themselves they barely even realized existed. He's pounding into her over and over as he's making these sounds into her mouth, and they might be words, they might be fraught and fraying sentences, some attempt to warn her or convey to her that he can't take the heat of her body, the tightness of her cunt, he can't take it, it's been so long, he can't take it,

he's going to come.

He does not let her go: he clasps her in his arms; he weighs her to the bed; he slams his orgasm into her deep as he can and he holds on. He loses his mind. He loses track of his voice, his body, his thoughts, but

he holds on to her.

And afterward:

they are both wrecked. He can barely move. He's panting atop her, a heavy weight against her back, and his legs are limp, his hair is damp with sweat. His temple rests against the sheets. His mouth is still against hers, though he's long since forgotten how to kiss. He's just breathing now. He's just trying to remember how to breathe, and

this is when his eyes sift open. Black lashes; eyes as blue as nuclear fusion. He looks at her like he can't remember who he is. He looks at her like he can't help but remember who she is.

Danicka

Danicka used him. Oh, yes she did. Used his lust to tease herself into a frenzy while sitting on his lap, used his body as soon as he gave it to her, squirmed and moaned and fucked him until she got herself off on his cock, and it didn't even matter if she let him kiss her, it didn't seem to matter if she said his name. She used every inch of him.

And softens now, leaning into him, pleading for him even if she can't stand him touching her cunt right now, because he's been using her, too. Uses her now, fucking himself into her harder and faster than before, pinning her down and pounding her. Uses that hot, tight pussy he's likely been dreaming of for more than a year, comes in it, fucks his cum into it until some mechanism in his primal brain believes that he's a part of her.

We say 'used'. Using. It is something more like surrender. It is something more like a gift, to dominate and be dominated. To give and receive. It is a beautiful thing, sometimes, to exist for a few scorching moments for the pleasure and safety and glory of another. To be used for some other purpose, something that for a little while seems even more important than yourself. It is like channeling a god.

Danicka collapses under him, as he collapses to her. They are wrecked, more than they ever were at the Affinia in New York, more than they ever have been after pleasuring each other with fingers, tongues, even just dry-humping in the backseat. She can't breathe and she gasps a couple of times, can't push him up or off of her, shivers and whimpers and asks him please and he moves off of her, he has to because she can't breathe, she's needing something. She breathes so deeply when he moves that her ribs expand outward, her body lifts with it. She's so hot, she says, and she is, she's sweating almost feverishly, she can't seem to cool off until she sprawls a little, half on her side now, her hips angled to keep him inside of her, her eyes closed because the room is spinning when she opens them.

There's a lock of hair stuck across her throat by sweat, like a slender golden noose. She doesn't have the presence or energy to move it. She just lies there, panting, until the world starts to return to normal. The colors fade to the point that they don't hurt her to look at them. Her eyes flicker open and she finds him still, still looking at her. Recognizing her.

Danicka looks back at him. She stops panting and closes her mouth, swallows. But she doesn't say anything. She tucks closer to him, closes her eyes again, and nuzzles tenderly against his jawline. Stays.

Lukas

Lukas can hardly move. He manages to stir off his lover, but only because he has to. He manages, when she nuzzles closer, to fold his arm over her. Draw her closer, under the drape of his arm, protected. That's what his primitive mind thinks: protected. Safe.

Good.

No other thoughts after that. Ever so slowly, Lukas's eyes close. He keeps her close, he stays close to her, and he slips, drifts, sleeps.

Minutes pass. Half an hour. He wakes just long enough to sense that their skins have cooled; just long enough to tuck her a little closer, and to fumble a fold of the comforters over them both. The lights are still on; he leaves them. He settles again, wraps his arms around Danicka, closes his eyes,

sleeps again.

Danicka

Sleep comes easily. Danicka is already tucked against him, breathing with him, and she doesn't want to talk. She doesn't want to process words. She doesn't want to move. The joke about the woman who wants to be cuddled and petted and talked to after sex has a far funnier reality: the only women who need that are the ones who got nothing out of what just happened. The women who are pleased, who are worn out, wrecked --

they go right to sleep as easily as any man after a solid fuck.

And so they sleep, both of them, quick and deep and safe together. Everyone knows they went out on a date. If people make assumptions they know better than to make jokes. His pack is never out of reach. No one worries. No one comes hunting them down.

When Lukas wakes, ever so briefly, it may be because Danicka is shivering. They've slipped apart. She's drowsed awake, some time ago, and cleaned herself up a bit. She's asleep, though, when Lukas opens his eyes. She may wake any second if he doesn't make her warm. So:

the blankets come to cover them. He flops them up. He flops back down. He encircles her. She curls into him. They sleep again, together, more.

Danicka wakes later. The sun is up. She usually wakes with it. It's bright though, and this is summer; it's only six or seven but it looks like midday. She groggily slips away, turns off the lights, shuts the curtains, comes back to bed. This time she slips behind him, holds him around his waist, rests her head on his upper back. He is a warm, soft wall of muscle. She has the best dreams like this, in shallower sleep, all disjointed and confused and beautiful and thrilling.

mmm. baby. we have to get up. they're going to charge us another day if we don't check out.

Oh, that's what she says around ten in the morning, but she's not moving. Her feet wiggle against his calves, her hands flex a little on the bedding, but she holds him from behind just as surely, her eyes still closed after checking the clock.

Lukas

Let's get this out of the way first: they sleep an obscene amount. Hours upon hours, from well before midnight to well past ten. At some point in the middle he flops the comforters up. At some point in the middle she turns out the lights, closes the drapes, so

when they wake, finally, they wake in a warm dark cave of their own making. She is somehow behind him now. He stirs slowly to consciousness, a little disoriented, not entirely sure where he is or how or when or...

We have to get up, she's saying, and he shifts a little, exhaling as he turns his face to the pillow. They'll charge us another day, she's saying. He grumbles at that, protesting; how unfair. And then he stretches within the circle of her arms, flexing hard, pulling taut, turning in a startling burst of motion to face her. Flops again, relaxing as suddenly and completely as he'd moved.

"Okay," he says, though he makes no move to get up, either. His arm falls over her waist, heavy and boneless. His eyes are closed again. He breathes quietly for a while. Then his eyes open: "I want to go talk to your brother."

Softly, that. Seriously. Steadily. He means it; he's thought about this.

"About us."

Danicka

Danicka's arms loosen gently around him as he turns. She opens her eyes, smiling, and that amount of sleep has left her lazy but alert, relaxed but bright-eyed. The circle closes again, drawing her nearer to him. Her body drags the sheets around them as she settles against him again, this time breast to breast. "You move too fast," she complains happily, nuzzling his chest. She seems, for all that she woke him up to say they should get up and clean up and check out, to have passed the ball of responsible thinking to him. He can worry about it now; she will go back to sleep.

What he says is not a new idea. They've talked about it before. She's let him know it's okay. She wants him to. He's said a couple of times now that he should plan a trip up -- he alone, or he and his pack, it's unclear -- to talk to Vladislav. Danicka has already said she will stay here. She doesn't want to go.

So at first she just snuggles, and then she wonders why he mentioned it at all, and then she opens her eyes and looks at him. "You mean right now?" she asks.

Lukas

Lukas's eyes are still open when Danicka reopens hers. He's looking at her so intently; the morning they slept through is right there in his eyes, brilliant, clear.

"Yeah," he says softly. "Or at least -- as soon as I make sure the pack's settled in at the plantation. Tomorrow. Today. I might bring Benny," he adds, "to tell the stories."

Danicka

Tomorrow. Today. Danicka stares at him, and it isn't wariness or sudden fear or shock. It isn't the way she felt when she left him at the Affinia and returned to her own life, stunned at her own foolishness, her own... feeling. It isn't the way she felt when she wrote that letter to him that nearly broke his heart for her. Faced with what she's asked for, what she wants, she isn't suddenly reeling away from it.

"Don't take Rolf," she whispers. "I don't want to think of the ways Vladik might try to hurt him. Or Hana, if she loses her temper or speaks out of turn..." Danicka takes a breath. "And you have to tell Benny to be careful."

She's quiet a moment. Reaches over, reaches up, and touches the edge of his face gently. "So make love to me again." It sounds, oddly, almost like a question.

Lukas

It makes Lukas ache a little, what she says. It says something about her, that her first reaction isn't elation, isn't impatience. That she doesn't think of herself first, or even of Lukas,

but of Rolf. Of Hana. Of all the people Vladik might want to hurt, would hurt if he could, because that's who he is. That's what he's like.

Lukas's hand covers hers. He isn't afraid. He covers her hand and squeezes it; wills her to understand that he isn't afraid, but he won't be reckless. "I won't," he promises, about Rolf and Hana. And, about Benny: "I will."

And then - a question that isn't. He breathes in, his body rising under the covers they've only barely used. He reaches out to her instead. He cups his hand behind her neck, but he doesn't pull her to him; moves over her instead, swift and sure as though this weren't the second time he's ever been in bed with her. He's naked under the covers, and so is she, and they're both rather filthy from last night, from not showering, from not even brushing their teeth, but

he doesn't think of that. He kisses her. He draws back; he looks at her gravely. He kisses her again, and this time he murmurs,

"Okay."

Danicka

He's going to go away again. She only just this morning got him back from death itself, and now she's to let him go -- today or tomorrow -- to risk losing him forever.

She touches his chest. His face. She asks him, and though she doesn't say please the sentiment is in her breath and on her tongue; she rolls easily onto her back when he comes over her, and already her breath is escalating, elevating, lifting her breasts toward him.

Danicka says his name, whispering it. She draws his hand to her breast and her own hand between his legs, leaning up to kiss him, moaning softly when she finds him. The second time she says his name it's a moan, and she's arching her back to meet him, shivering.

Lukas

They've only been together a handful of times. Four or five, maybe six on the outside, depending on just how you counted it. And of all those times, this might be the first, the very first, where there's no hesitation or uncertainty on either side. Not a trace of reserve or caution. Not a beat of pause. Not a single silly question, can I or should I or do I need a condom.

None of that, this time. No room for it. No time. They've met so early in their lives, and even so, with all their lives ahead of them, it seems like they never have enough time. He was dead to her, this time yesterday. He might be dead again to her, or as good as, by this time tomorrow. By this time the day after.

They have no time. They have no doubts, either. Fear for what the future might bring, yes, but no fear of each other, or what they might mean to one another. She leans up to kiss him. He meets her in the middle. She finds him hardening in her hand; he finds her breast with his, cups it as he kisses her. Her back arches. It's a signal as old as time.

And he responds. He answers her: shifting over her, keeping his weight off her and on his elbows. The kiss parts for a moment. He glances down, and what he sees there inflames him, makes his cock jump in her hand. He wants to tell her to guide him, help him, but he doesn't need to. She fits him where he needs to be and he flexes into her; her head falls back and he kisses her neck,

wraps his arms around her as she wraps her legs around him,

moves with her.

It's intense this time, but nearly silent. They keep each other so close. They clasp each other close, gasping into the scarce space between. The comforters half-shroud them, diffusing the light of the morning; amidst that pale golden glow, Lukas seems dark, solid, a wall of force. He was not like this, the first time they made love. He will not be like this in another year's time, either. He's growing stronger all the time. So is she, though her strength is not so visible as his.

And his strength is, in the light of day, so starkly visible. It's in the breadth and thickness of his shoulders over her. It's in the flexion in his arms and his chest; the heavy controlled force of his body. They are so close this time. She can feel every moment, every motion,

every step closer to the edge, until he's wrapping her in his arms, holding her close, holding her as though he could protect her against his own motion, his own strength. He's quieter this time. He breathes harshly. He muffles groans against her mouth, her neck. He moans at the end, his brow to hers, his eyes closed, lost, transported, coming inside her with short, stark snaps of his hips.

He stays close to her afterward. He drinks kisses from her mouth. When they finally bestir themselves from bed, he follows her to the shower. He barely wants to let her out of his arms, and keeps her wrapped close even as she soaps up. They end up washing each other. They end up rather late, dressing each other in last night's clothes, checking out thirty minutes after eleven.

The front desk forgives them. Danicka is just so lovely, so charming, and besides - Lukas gives off this sense that maybe things will just be better for everyone involved if everyone involved does what Danicka is so politely asking.

Lukas doesn't want to head back to the plantation just yet. They end up getting bourbon chicken again. They end up sitting on the grassy banks of the river, sharing a ridiculously large helping of bourbon chicken, sharing the sunlight, sharing the summer, sharing each other's presence.

A good day, Lukas thinks. Days like this are worth risking everything. Days like this are worth everything.

Danicka

It isn't because he's young -- okay, it's partly because he's young -- that he hardens so quickly for her. She barely has to touch him. Sometimes all she does is look at him. Touch his arm a certain way, with a certain slowness, lightness, and all the blood rushes out of his head. She touches him now, strokes his cock below the sheets, and he's making a small noise with his breath as he kisses her, his body twitching in response.

But it's not the same with Danicka. She's so private, so... reclusive. He's closer to her than anyone and sometimes she's afraid that she isn't letting him in enough. She's afraid that he'll think she holds back, that she doesn't really want to be close to him, that he'll feel pushed way or held at arm's length. Not too afraid, but it crosses her mind sometimes. She knows that deep down she's as solitary as a cat. She knows that deep down, in the very cores of their souls, Lukas belongs to her and she belongs... to herself. She wonders sometimes if it's some flaw, some crack in her spirit, or if maybe she's just too selfish to give herself over with the same devotion he shows.

Then he says something, and usually it's so meaningless, it's just a certain voice or a look in his eyes and it's always when they're like this, when all their words are almost gone. He says her name or he touches her a certain way and she's wet, she's aching suddenly and hotly, she's arching her back and begging him to please, please, and she can't even tell him what to please do. It isn't about sticking his cock in her cunt and fucking her with it. It isn't even about being close, wrapped up his arms. It's just that sometimes he knows her, she can feel it in every last cell of her body. He sees her, he knows her, and he wants her. He loves her, all of it, entire.

She begs him for that. She begs him, with her hands holding tight to his arms and her moans interrupting even the attempt at words and her legs keeping him as near as she can -- please know me. please love me. please be with me. and stay. stay, please.

There are lives where they never met. There are lives where her soul spent its bodily days alone. Maybe mated or married, maybe not, but alone. If it is not him, then there is no one. And she knows that now. It's like he was made out of her rib-bone, made for her, made to fit against her and thus make even breathing easier. She loves him more than her own life. She wonders if he knows that.

Then this, just like this, and she knows he does. She knows it's the same for him.

Her hand is in his hair while he kisses her neck, fingertips spread up over the back of his head. She's so tight, even now, groaning on nearly every stroke, or just letting out those hitched, breathy whimpers she does, the ones that sometimes turn into cries. They kick the blankets off after awhile. It's like they've always been doing this. It doesn't feel new. It just feels right. Like mates, she keeps thinking. Like male and female. As natural as rain coming down.

That's what her orgasm is like. A roll of thunder and then a downpour, and she's clutching at his body and moaning, then gasping, almost whining as that first soaring arc turns into pulses, shocks of pleasure. She's almost limp by the end of it, panting, unable to cling to him the way she was, her strength lost, while he comes in her, kisses her, fucks her to completion. She adores him so tenderly then, not realizing yet in her youth that she always will, that these moments when he's losing himself in her will always make her heart break with adoration, with care, with protectiveness.

When he cannot move, after, she holds him gently. She rests their heads together, bodies tangled and sweat drying, massaging her fingers on his scalp. It is hard not to sleep again, despite the ten-plus hours they spent unconcious together after that first destroying go-round. Eventually she whispers to him that she wants to take a shower, and she's drawing away from him and he's stirring, opening his eyes, watching her like she's something new, something to be stared at until it's understood.

And then he's following her, led by those eyes and that stare, coming into the bathroom after her as though there's a string between them. One knotted in the center of his chest, the other tied around her heart. Can't go too far, or you'll feel a tug.

Lukas, never one to go halfway, doesn't just let the thread go slack. He wraps her in his arms, holds them heart to heart, and she nuzzles his chest, his shoulder, sniffs his sweaty and sex-riddled smell and the water and neither of them speak. Anything they might say right now would be beside the point.

They leave in a thrifted black suit and a slinky gold dress into the late morning. Her hair is wet, combed through but loose, drying under the sunlight. They stop by another thrift store -- different, this time -- because she wants something else, and then she's in high heels and a pair of shorts that are almost too big and a t-shirt that definitely is and she thinks she looks appropriately nawlins-trashy and this upsets Lukas, because she isn't trashy at all and he's frowning but she's laughing, so it must be okay, it's a joke, she doesn't mean that, so eventually

it's okay, and he's laughing too, smiling, rolling up the sleeves of that shirt she bought for him and then just unbuttoning it while they walk around, while they buy bourbon chicken from a street vendor and eat out of paper containers on the grass by the lazy summer slowness of the river. She takes off her shoes and lies on her side, her head on his leg, and they talk about... nothing of consequence. Shapes in the clouds. Movies and music she wants to show him now that he's back. Something ridiculous Hana said on the hunt, something funny Rick did when he was drunk last week. The life that is, and not the life that almost was.

And not the life that yet may be.