if we could, just once.

Lukas Wyrmbreaker

Winter has turned Grant Park into a leafless still life occasionally traversed by runners, dogwalkers, citizens of the great city of Chicago daring to brave the cold. Some few tourists still mill around the Jellybean and snap pictures of the city, and families and kids make good use of the free skating rink up at the north end of the park. For the most part, though, this is the off-season, the quiet-season, the time of year where Grant Park goes into hibernation.

It's a little livelier across the street. The Loop is never quite quiet; not even when the streets are barren and all the citizens of this great city make their way from building to building via tunnels, skybridges, and madcap dashes across freezing streets. Out on the sidewalk, the world is dismal, all shades of grey and blue. Inside, though, all the colors of warmth: reds and oranges and incandescent glow; gleaming merchandise, well-lit displays, the subliminal promise of spring.

There's a cafe just across from the Art Institute. It's wedged into the lowermost level of a classic hundred-year-old building once owned by Studebaker. That's the sort of royalty and history Chicago is home to: a heritage of industrialists, machinists, railroad-layers, hog-butchers, steel-workers. These days, that building has a certain classic chic of its own, and the cafe -- uninventively named the Artist's Snack Shop -- is a charmingly pseudobohemian sort of place that serves somewhat overpriced food and drink in a somewhat cramped-cozy venue.

That's where the day finds Lukas Wyrmbreaker. In the Artist's Snack Shop, sitting by himself in a windowside booth made for three or four. He has a half-eaten gyros on a plate before him, and a mug that might contain mocha or hot cocoa. His coat is neatly folded on the seat beside him, scarf and gloves and hat atop, leaving him in a thin sweater, a collared shirt.

Also, a book. Which he appears quite engrossed in.

Danicka Vedernikov

Of course she sees him when she passes by outside. First it is the feeling of something unsettling and cold tracing up her spine, then the realization that it is not gone when she puts the hood of her coat up. Then the niggling to one side, like someone tugging on her ear. Then turning her head that way, finding him with her eyes, exhaling, and she does not intend it but her steps arrest anyway, and for a moment she is just standing there, looking through the window at him,

simultaneously willing him to look up and begging him not to.

Lukas Wyrmbreaker

Perhaps it was a little like this when she stood on her balcony the night they had dinner together. Smoking her cigarette, feeling a little lightheaded from all the drink. Watching him downstairs, shaking hands with her so-very-affable husband and mate. Clasping arms, really. Speaking words inaudible to her, though they very much concerned her; a vow given and accepted. At the curb he turned; perhaps to wave to Stepan, but Stepan had already gone inside. Stepan was already climbing the stairs back to his wife, and something, some sixth sense or tug of fate drew Lukas's eyes upward, tracking up the side of the building until he saw her.

Looked at her, then, for a small eternity. Or perhaps only a few seconds. She apparently tells her husband everything, though with whatever spin best suits her; for all that, he made remarkably little effort to put on a show for her. Not when it was only her. He did not bow, he did not smile, he did not even wave. He met her eyes. He looked up at her a while, saying nothing and indicating nothing. The moment hung crystalline. Then he turned away and got into his car, his unremarkable and unostentatious sedan. Drove away.

--

Now she has stopped outside his window. He is reading a book. The lights gleam off his hair, cast a warm glow onto his swarthy skin. He leafs one page forward, and then someone somewhere does something that makes him raise his head. He is an animal in that moment, instinctive-reactive, keen, such strength and potential leashed tightly and held firm.

Then his head turns. He looks through the window; sees her. There is a moment when he does nothing, does not even seem to react.

Then, all in one motion, he stands. So tall, so well-formed, so poised and alert. The fine cut of his clothes skimming the lines of his body, sleekening the raw, massive blocks of chest and shoulder, bicep and fist. One finger is caught in his book, marking his page. He flicks his eyes toward the entrance of the cafe. It is an invitation,

or perhaps an order,

so subtle that she might almost miss it.

Danicka Vedernikov

From three stories down, wearing that dress that was part medieval, part art deco, part daring, daring statement, he could see her chest moving as she breathed. He could see the steam from that breath curling and mingling with the smoke from her cigarette as she exhaled. He saw that she looked at him, then, in his eyes for the second time that night and the second time ever,

but did not look away.

--

Today she is wearing a lot more clothing. Grey jeans that fit like a second skin, tucked into knee-high boots with only a couple of inches to the heels. Whatever blouse she has on is hidden beneath her coat, a white, thick, woolen one. Beneath her hood and all that blonde hair spilling out there is also a crocheted green cap, sort of loose but with a tiny brim, a little white flower set to one side. It looks quite springy, for the weather.

He rises and he can see her heel drop as she lets her weight move back a bit. It is not quite a scrambling away from the glass, nowhere near, but it is an unconscious recoiling. He sees her lick her lips, just as he's glancing at the door.

When he looks back to her, he finds she is looking at the door now, too, where he glanced, before slowly looking back to him. She exhales, and even in daylight it coils outward from her mouth before she walks to the door, taking it in one gloved hand and drawing it open, stepping inside, reaching up to tap her hood back. Danicka walks over to him, her footsteps soft, and then inclines her head.

"How are you, Lukas?" she asks softly, first, because the person who speaks first is always the one who loses the power. She doesn't even attempt to pretend she has any.

Lukas Wyrmbreaker

He is still standing when she approaches him. Impossible to say if it's chivalry or dominance. Nevertheless: she approaches. The cafe is crowded today, full of patrons seeking a little warmth and light in the midst of winter.

"Danicka," he answers, and this is all he says for the time. It will have to do. A moment later he gestures her toward the seat across from him; lowers himself into his own.

Now they face each other across his half-eaten snack, his half-drunk coffee. And his half-read book, which he lays down on the table. His eyes are resting on her, moving over her face. He trains himself not to look below the tip of her nose.

"I'm well," he adds a little later. "May I offer you a drink? Something to eat?"

Danicka Vedernikov

[come on kahseeno don't be a brat]

Dice: 7 d10 TN6 (1, 1, 2, 2, 4, 5, 7, 10) ( fail ) Re-rolls: 1

Lukas Wyrmbreaker

[1. Her.

2. To be honorable.

3. Her.]

Lukas Wyrmbreaker

[He is, beneath his ever-present reserve, happy to see her -- but it's a complicated sort of happy, almost in spite of himself. He is also wary to see her. Still, he wants her to stay a while.]

Danicka Vedernikov

He gestures for her to sit. So: she sits. She does not take off her gloves or her coat. She doesn't settle in like she means to stay. Her eyes glance down at his book while he looks at her face. She is used to being looked at. She knows how it feels.

He asks her if she wants something to drink or eat and Danicka lifts her eyes, but she looks at his hands first. She looks at the tension in them, and only slowly tracks her gaze up to his mouth. They flick at his eyes, briefly, but do not meet them so much as pass over them. Her pupils are still adjusting to the interior light, softer than outside, the blacks widening into the green.

She finds that something very deep

hurts very badly,

all of a sudden.

And exhales: "I don't want to impose."

Lukas Wyrmbreaker

"You're not imposing," says her companion-for-the-moment, this blue-eyed Ahroun who sits so still across from her. He is still looking at her, though she is -- once again -- refusing to meet his eyes.

An exhale precedes his movement. He gets up, he goes across the cafe, he comes back having fetched her a menu. As he hands it to her, Lukas sits again. Some time goes by.

"The coffee here is decent," he says for lack of anything better to say. "The hot cocoa is better."

Danicka Vedernikov

[WP]

Dice: 5 d10 TN6 (3, 6, 8, 9, 10) ( success x 4 )

Danicka Vedernikov

Lukas gets up. Gets a menu to bring it back. She is wary of him, that much is written across her face, in the knotting of her brow beneath that pretty, green-and-floral hat. Or maybe that isn't wariness but bewilderment.

It overwhelms her.

"I told him I wanted him to tell you to stay away from me," she says quietly, to Lukas, when he's telling her the cocoa is better.

Lukas Wyrmbreaker

Give him this much: he hardly flinches. A furrow appears between his eyebrows. Nothing more or less. Their conversation is rife with pauses, and here is another one. After a moment he reaches out, wraps his hand around his mug. Brings it closer so that he can fold both hands around it.

"Well," he says quietly, and perhaps a little flatly, "that isn't what he told me."

Steam rises slowly from his mug. His eyes are on the liquid now, that furrow in his brow deepening to a frown. He looks at her again.

"Why?" It's hardly audible. "Have I done something to make you feel threatened or dishonored?"

Danicka Vedernikov

"You frighten me," she says, very quietly, not flatly at all.

Lukas Wyrmbreaker

Dice: 2 d10 TN6 (5, 8) ( success x 1 )

Danicka Vedernikov

[It's only partly his rage.]

Lukas Wyrmbreaker

To his credit, Lukas does not immediately fly into a fury. He looks at his mug again. He lifts it in one hand, and he sips, and then he sets it down. Those frowning, glacial eyes of his find her.

"I don't want to hurt you," he says. "That is the last thing I would want."

Danicka Vedernikov

Danicka exhales. She curls her hands, slowly, fingers beneath her palms. "I don't believe you will." She furrows her brow again, looking almost... sad.

"Stepan is good to me," she says quietly, watching him, as though trying to forestall something, trying to fend it off. "He is a better mate than I could have hoped for."

Lukas Wyrmbreaker

Silence.

And then a whisper: "Why are you telling me this?"

Danicka Vedernikov

"So you'll leave me alone," she tells him, a little achingly, almost... pityingly. But that isn't quite what it is. "I did speak to him about you, and I told him you were respectful and that though you frightened me, I didn't think you meant to. I told him what you offered,"

and that he pushed, a bit hard,

"and I told him I didn't want to be around you. But he asked about you, and he learned about you, and... " obviously, gave his permission for Lukas to not just Not Leave Her Alone but actively interfere with her if necessary. She doesn't finish that sentence. "Now after that dinner, he thinks well of you. And he wants to make sure I'm safe, and he thinks you're honorable."

Danicka exhales, again, barely breathing in for all the sighing, but she remembers to this time. "I'm telling you all this because if you start coming to dinner at our house and escorting me around town and getting drunk with my husband and being in our lives like that, I think... I will do something to ruin all of it. Or go mad."

Lukas Wyrmbreaker

[I ONLY HAVE TWOO DICES BUT DIS IS IMPORTUNT. WAT IS SIMMERING UNDAR SURFASS HEER, I AR DUM AHROON AN I NEED HALP.]

Dice: 2 d10 TN6 (1, 6) ( success x 1 ) [WP]

Danicka Vedernikov

[She's being honest! Including the part about being afraid of him, afraid that she's going to lose her mind or fuck up all their lives! But that part about dinner at their house, escorting her, getting drunk, being around, and her 'ruining it' definitely implies... well. He's not that dumb, he can figure out the surest way she could ruin all their lives. But she doesn't mean doing something stupid like on purpose. Just: that she wouldn't be able to help it. She'd go mad.]

Lukas Wyrmbreaker

He is not a fool. He has eyes. He can see. He can feel what simmers beneath the surface, a current between the two of them. He can surmise at what lies beneath, and he is at once perversely driven to uncover it, hunt it down, expose it,

and afraid to look.

He is afraid to look, but the looks anyway. And what he sees is enough to make him turn away from her, bodily, turning his face to the window. It is getting dark out there. It isn't even five in the afternoon yet, but -- such is winter. Such is their season. His, anyway.

"I am honorable," Lukas says quietly. In the window he can see, also, the reflection of this cafe. Her profile, reflected. She is very beautiful, but he knows she is not the most beautiful creature on this earth. She is very pure, but he knows she is not the purest blood to be found. He cannot fathom her appeal, instantaneous and deep. He cannot fathom why he was so...

drawn to her. Drawn, from the very first moment.

"I am honorable," he repeats, "and your husband didn't mistakenly place his trust in me. I would have kept you safe. Even from yourself. Even from me. I didn't dare stay that night after dinner, you realize. I couldn't trust myself to stay. It was an act of will to leave all the same. And when I saw you looking down from your balcony, I wanted to change my mind. And I didn't.

"But," his eyes find hers again across that table. Or as near as she'll allow, "I have to confess, there's a part of me that thinks if I could just ... if we could just ...

" ... just once. If we could. Then it would be enough. We could set it behind us and move on."

Beat.

"I know that isn't true."

Danicka Vedernikov

Even from yourself. She looks away, briefly, at the interior of the window. She doesn't look at him, even as he goes on, not until

he keeps talking. And confesses something he doesn't have to confess at all, he doesn't have to tell her that. She looks at him with something not unlike accusation in her eyes.

"Then why did you say it?"

Lukas Wyrmbreaker

This is the first time they've looked each other in the eye and conversed. The first time they've really talked to each other.

"Because I want it to be true," replies Lukas. Cocoa forgotten. Gyros forgotten. Book forgotten. "Because I find myself drawn to you, and it's almost more than I can bear."

A small exhale.

"Almost."

His eyes drop, then. He looks at the table. All these things, the minor detritus of his everyday life, scattered around him like runes from which some truth about him can be divined. See here: the cocoa half-drunk; his quiet predilection for sweets. See here: the gyros half-eaten; his taste for lamb and beef. See here: the book half-read; his thoughtful mind, his patience, his intelligence.

See here: the menu he got her. He would feed her if he could. Provide for her if she would let him. Or perhaps -- perhaps that's a stretch too far. It could all mean nothing.

"Stepan is good to you?" He comes back to this. "He doesn't belittle you, beat you, abuse you?"

Danicka Vedernikov

Not the first time.

But the first they will both remember with this sort of clarity, their vision edged in white heat, every word -- every movement, every sound, everything they wore, every item on the table -- charged with some sort of meaning and power. Danicka senses the air between them thick and impassable, senses it as though it was humming, vibrating, with whatever energy is built between them.

It is

almost

more than they can bear.

--

Lukas asks her about her husband.

She is very still, before that, holding herself in place so quietly she seems to be barely breathing, watching him, thinking of the way he spoke about his pack the other night, the way he spoke of their plans and the way in her mind she ruthlessly derided his idealism, his naive certainty in his pack and himself, the way he spoke of them so much more deeply, and simply so much more, than of his blood family. Not that he spoke with disrespect of his parents and sister; they just did not occupy as much of his attention, did not take up much space in his conversation.

And she is thinking about how sometimes, she caught his eyes on her. For a moment, half a moment, and how in those half-moments her chest would cave in slightly and the carefully stacked walls of derision, of disillusionment, of denigration would tumble around her in soft heaps, never really any armor at all, and she would beg him in her thoughts to forgive her,

only to rebuild, when he looked at Stepan again. Half-moments, only.

Danicka doesn't answer at first. Her brow furrows as she looks at the table, her expression one of ache as she examines the book he's been reading. He's changing the subject, but she doesn't call him on it. Not because she's polite. Because he thinks he's a Good, Upstanding Garou. Because he thinks, she's certain, he would never, ever hurt her.

"Not yet," she says, which is the truth. That 'yet' is not one of bitterness or fear, it is not seeking pity. It is simply... resignation. As though it were as inevitable as snow coming down, or spring thawing, just: not yet.

She looks at him again, says softly: "Do you want to take me somewhere?"

Lukas Wyrmbreaker

Something rather like pain flickers through those extraordinary eyes of his. He exhales slowly; lets go his mug and, if she allows it, reaches out to rest his fingertips on the back of her hand. Covers her hand with his own, ever so gently.

"Of course I do, Danicka," he says, just as softly. "But I don't think I should. Not if your mate is good to you. Not if you have something to lose."

It wasn't a change of subject at all. It was -- a sort of calculation, cold and bitter. His hand leaves hers. He is gathering up his book, his outerwear. Standing, taking his wallet from his pocket to strip out a few crisp bills. Sets down enough to cover his small meal.

His eyes meet hers again. He looks at her levelly.

"I'll leave you alone as much as possible. I'll avoid your mate and your family as much as I can."

Danicka Vedernikov

She does not allow it, and when his hand moves towards her she freezes for a moment, then curls her hand back. She is still wearing her gloves, but the leather is warm to the brief, grazing touch of his fingertips before she pulls away.

"Would you," she says, as he is rising from his chair, perhaps even before he's gotten a chance to tell her he'll leave her alone, "if he were cruel?"

Her head is tipping to the side, her eyes luminous, vivid, shifting in color even as he looks at them, turning faintly cloudy blue when the sunlight comes in from outside. Her voice is like a satin, whispering over barbed wire, somehow -- miraculously -- remaining uncaught, untorn, undestroyed.

"Why would that make such a difference?"

Lukas Wyrmbreaker

He has his glove and scarf in one hand; his coat over that arm. He's fitting his newsboy cap over his head, flattening that short-cut hair that would, if it were even a little longer, start to curl and wave. Her question makes him grimace.

"I might. I don't know. I would certainly feel compelled to -- help you, if he were. Somehow.

"And it does make a difference. If he was cruel to you, he wouldn't deserve to have a mate like you, and you wouldn't deserve to suffer a monster like him. You wouldn't be losing anything worthwhile. As it stands now, you would be. Stepan seems a good enough man, and he is certainly strong enough to keep you safe and content.

"I can't let you throw that away for lust."

Danicka Vedernikov

I might.

No wonder he grimaces; there goes his semblances of honor and uprightness. There goes his morality, his sanity: if her mate were cruel and abusive and mean to her, he might take her somewhere. Might indulge. Might rid himself, for a night, of the standards he holds himself. Throw it all away, for lust.

Danicka does not scoff at him. She does not sneer in mockery or disgust. Something flickers in her eyes when he talks of being compelled to 'help her', but it does not make it past the shifting lights in her irises. She does not even frown as he talks, like it matters, of what people do and don't deserve if they act in such-and-such a way. She doesn't even frown at the way he imagines her to be: undeserving of ill treatment, for reasons he can't possibly back up with anything but her beauty, her breeding, her value as well as her vulnerability. That is how she hears it. That is how she hears him, idealistic thing that he is.

Innocent thing that he is.

"If he were a monster, and you fucked me, or tried to save me, I would lose quite a bit more."

She says it quietly, and sideways, but the implications are like a punch in the jaw. She doesn't even grace the sentence with a gentling probably in that last clause. She says it like she knows -- they both know -- but she says it like it wouldn't be the first time. That casually. That dryly.

But she isn't being that dry. She looks like she can't move, watching him stand up, get his scarf and gloves and coat, put on his hat. He's already thrown down bills and abandoned his food and made his decision: he'll stay away from her unless she's in danger. He'll stay away from her 'family'. Something in her --

no matter.

Danicka looks away from him, at his gyro and cocoa and book and the bills for his half-eaten meal, abandoned not because he was done but because... of her, really, at least in some fashion. She puts on a small, serene smile after a moment, turns it to him, says: "Hezký den, Lukáš."

Lukas Wyrmbreaker

An understated moment. Eye contact, as long as she'll hold it, and his presence at her table, which used to be his table. He lingers there for just a little while, long enough to tug his gloves on, long enough to wrap his scarf around his neck. Long enough to just

stand there

and look at her for a moment.

"Goodnight, Danicka," he says. And then he shrugs into his coat, buttons it as he walks to the entrance. The door opens, a thin knife of cold wedges into the warmth of the cafe -- a moment later he passes the window, walking away. He doesn't look at her again.