LukasCall when you're ready, she said. Surely some part of her doesn't expect him to call again for days, weeks, maybe ever. But he does call, and he calls that very night, a quarter past seven. She's away from her phone or she has it on silent, so he leaves a message. It's brief and to the point:
It's me. I just got off. Listen, I don't have to be in until noon tomorrow. Do you want to meet me somewhere for a late dinner? There's a Ukrainian joint in East Village, Veselka on 1st and 1st. Say maybe 9pm? Just text me back.
She texts him back. Or she calls. She confirms, and he takes a shower and changes into fresh clothes. He takes the train down: the A to the F, gets off at 2nd Ave, walks a half block east and a half block north. He's there a little early, five minutes to nine, so he waits outside for her.
The area is fashionably downmarket: brick mid and lowrises with fire escapes still descending the outer walls, little mom-and-pop shops proudly declaring their circa-1962s. Veselka itself has been around since the mid-50s. A sign in the window declares it open 24hrs, and the menus hung over the counter and the single large dining room inside give it something of the air of the eastern-european cafeteria it used to be. This area's gentrified, though, and so has the restaurant. The windows are large and spacious. The floor is hardwood. There are strategic patches of exposed brick on the walls, exposed piping in the ceilings. The lighting is tasteful, and the waiters wear long white aprons over their all-blacks. There are Ukrainian beers on the menu, though, and the food hasn't changed much over the last sixty years.
There are a group of men smoking outside, regulars from an older age. Lukas stands upwind, watching for blonde hair, green eyes, the wolf in woman's skin. His shirt is collared but casual, broad stripes of grey and greyish-blue. His jeans are nice. His coat has an upscale air, and saves him from any hint of frump - dark grey wool, lean cut, midthigh-length, broad lapels and straps at shoulder and wrist giving it a faint trenchcoat look. He wears it open; it's not that cold out.
DanickaNo, she wasn't expecting him to call. Some part of her didn't even want him to. She takes the train instead of running through the umbra this time, staring out the window at nothing as it shoots southward. She smells. She looks very strange, in the car with people heading to work or school, dressed the way she is, still tousled from sex and sleep, her eyes tired and sad and angry, her skin bared in seemingly thoughtless but fascinating angles.
Back at her place, she sleeps. Mire is not there; Josef and Stella are in his room asleep. Danicka comes in quietly, showers in her own bathroom, walks naked to Josef's room and slips into her lupine form, fur still damp. She wedges herself on the futon mattress on the floor close to her brother and little sister. Josef's wet nose huffs outward, a faint sneeze, at the soap and human smell of her. Stella sleeps on her side, legs stuck outward, hanging off the edge of the mattress. Danicka feels her brother rest his muzzle across the back of her neck, and closes her eyes. She is comforted. She does not wake up to see the sun go down.
When she wakes, she's alone. She stretches and yawns, shakes her fur out, blinks bleary eyes a few times. It is not full dark outside yet. She leaves Josef's dark room and finds Mire there, Josef and Stella gone now. They eat ollada and bread and wine on the windowseats, looking down from seventy-three stories in the air. No one has spoken, and no one has needed to. In her bathroom, in a pile of black fabric, Danicka's phone vibrates a few times. Slowly it becomes full dark outside, but you wouldn't know it; the lights of the city come on to compensate, create a whole new kind of twilight.
Danicka asks if Mire saw the Kvasnickas. Mire confirms. Lukas's dam offered her coffee. Danicka's mouth twists, amused. The other two say they are headed back, save them some food, so she goes to get dressed. She checks her phone and sees the voicemail waiting, decides to listen to it instead of having the palm-size computer transcribe it to text. Decides to listen to his voice. Surprise doesn't register on her face. She is so wary now, so betrayed by and thus bitter towards delight and warmth that she shuts them out, does not let them cross her threshhold. The thought of making love to him til well into next morning doesn't even register when she hears him say when he's scheduled tomorrow. Her text back is plain:
See you then.
Even so, she dresses well. Not her suit, not a dress because it's pretty and she wants to be pretty and she wants him to see her and think pretty, but a pair of leg-hugging near-black jeans and gray blue ankle boots with a rather surprisingly high black heel. Her shirt harkens back to blue chambray work shirts, recut and reimagined to suit someone like her, the collar a bit sharper, the fit following her torso. She owns a black leather jacket, a couple of flat zippered pockets on the upper sleeves, lapels that fold over one another, a motorcycle collar, cropped to just at her waist. The cuffs of her shirt come past the sleeves.
She wears small gold hoops in her earlobes. A black purse slung across her body on a gleaming chain woven through with a thin strip of leather.
She gets there at 9, walks to him, watches him.
LukasLukas straightens a little when he sees Danicka. It's a subtle thing, an elongation of the spine, a shifting of his weight. The reaction is thoughtless, instinctive. She comes close to him and something flickers in his eyes; recognition, sensation.
"Hi," he says quietly. "Thanks for coming."
He doesn't touch her as they go in, though he walks closer to her than mere acquaintances would. The door opens to a wave of noise: conversation, clattering dishes. A server looks at them, smiles brightly. That smile fades a touch as Danicka nears, but then the man rallies and shows them to a table - toward the back, by the window. They have neighbors, but they are involved in their own conversations, paying little attention.
Their table is small, but there are four seats arranged around it. Lukas sits to Danicka's right rather than across from her. Close enough that their conversation can be quiet, private. They're told the waiter will be right over. Lukas looks at the drinks list, glances at the menu; he's not here enough to be a regular, but he's here enough that he knows what he wants. He waits for Danicka to consult her menu. When she folds it aside, he's looking at her. His regard is keen, a little bit questioning somehow. A few moments go by. Then:
"If you want to ask me anything, ask. Otherwise ... I can try to explain where I'm standing a little better."
DanickaThe older men smoking outside look at her as she comes, too. They feel familiarity with her, and that pleases and unnerves them at once. Something about her gait feels threatening, something about her eyes and her face feels like looking at their daughter, their wife thirty years ago, that girl they almost met at a fair a long, long time ago. Something about her presence near them makes the hair on the backs of their necks stand on end with terror, makes their guts twist, makes them cough on the smoke they're sucking in.
This could be a first date, the way Lukas and Danicka are with each other. Except they aren't really nervous, aren't tittering, aren't smiling shyly or eagerly at each other. Danicka breathes in the smell of the room as she walks in, unshouldering her bag, carrying it with her to the seat they're shown. She keeps her jacket on; it's actually quite thin, and they sit close to the same corner rather than facing each other. Danicka notices that.
She doesn't look at the menu. She looks at him, half-leaning back in her chair.
"Do you want to be with me?" she asks, and this takes no thought on her part, no hesitation. If you want to ask me anything, ask is met with this forthright, sharp as a blade question. Her tone is that of a healer: do you want me to take care of that for you?, even if its truth comes right at the core of the matter, slices it open, cradles the organs and meat in her hands.
"I'm not saying forever or let's get married or I want to get pregnant, and I'm not asking you what you thought all day," she says, because she knows -- she just knows -- he'll answer from that perspective, he'll see the question as so big, so unwieldy, that he can't cope with it. Her eyes are aching, even if her expression and her voice don't betray it. The eyes always do. "But take everything else away, down in your gut -- do you want to be with me?"
And it's such a vulnerable question, so raw and so bare, that it hurts to even hear it. It hurts to say it.
LukasShe doesn't even get past the question. She asks, her eyes are on him, his eyes are on her and that is absolute, that is contact even if no other part of them is touching. She starts to say I'm not saying forever, and he cuts her off, is quiet, intense, solid.
"Yes."
So there's that, at least. And a moment goes by. And then he exhales like a sigh, looks down at the table to find her hand. He puts his hand over hers, and that hand is large, is strong, does not look like a healer's hands at all. But then, she's not a healer herself. He slips his fingers under hers and his thumb traces the back of her knuckles.
"But there are so many other things about this that make me wary."
DanickaThen that is where she stops. She doesn't flash lightning in her eyes at the interruption. She just stops talking, and though her physical position changes very little, something about her relaxes. A knot inside of her loosens enough to be gently worked straight and smoothed out again. Lukas says yes, and it seems: that's all she really needs. Danicka moves closer to him. This time he doesn't recoil. She wants to put her head on his shoulder, but she doesn't.
He covers her hand. She holds his. Neither of them strictly look like healers, like a surgeon, like a medicine woman. But that is what they are. It's just that both of them are also so, so much more than that.
"I know," she tells him, because she does. And just then, their waiter comes over and wants to tell them about specials or seasonal pierogi, but Danicka cuts him off: "Franksisaner heffe weissen," she says. And then she proceeds to order a 'big plate' of pierogi, and just gets one of each.
LukasLukas draws a breath to reply, but that's when the waiter comes. Their eyes divert from each other. Their hands don't. Danicka cuts the waiter off; he stops talking instantly. She orders. Bitch, he thinks in his mind, uncertain of why this one small thing angers him so. Unnerves him so.
"Lvivskie," Lukas says. "And the deluxe meat plate."
They'll share the food, he thinks, when it gets here. Thank-yous are traded; the waiter departs. Lukas looks back at their hands, still linked. And he knows their drinks are coming shortly, he knows they'll be interrupted at least twice more before they settle into their dinners, but he talks anyway. He's been thinking about it all day. It's been bottled inside him all day, all the way down the subway, all the time he waited at the door.
"I know about the war," he says quietly. "I know what's at stake. I've always tried to live my life in a way that wouldn't hinder the cause. And I've always tried to give what aid I could. But I never planned on catching the eye of a Garou. I never wanted to. It's not just ... fear of what Garou, Shadow Lord Garou, are like. The chaos they could wreak in my life and the lives of my family, the pain they could inflict. It's not just that.
"It's the war too. It's the thought that I could bind my life to someone, maybe even fall in love with someone, who's almost guaranteed to die young. And horribly. And with no warning whatsoever. I see a lot of pain and death every day. I don't want to have to imagine that happening to someone I care for."
A pause.
"I don't want it to happen to you. But I can't control that, and neither can you. So ... some part of me does not want to have to be there when it happens."
DanickaShe wants him to take their orders and go away. That's what he does. Danicka wins. Danicka doesn't care, doesn't think about, how he feels about the matter. She turns her attention back to Lukas as the waiter departs, and she sees him looking at their linked hands. Whatever he has to say now is okay. Whatever he was thinking, feeling, mulling over, has a place with her now. He wants to be with her. Even if that instinct is complicated by a hundred other things, he wants to be with her and he knows it.
Everything else, she can handle.
Her eyebrows give a faint flick of surprise when he says he never planned on catching the eye of a Garou, but she doesn't interrupt to comment. She draws them together when he says he never wanted to. They, they, he says, and she is part of that nebulous 'they' -- Garou. Shadow Lord. Potential mate. And he thinks: chaos, pain, fear. She sees how he puts binding his life to someone before falling in love with them. She hears him say he sees pain and death, but it's not his family, it's not the people he cares for, loves. He can't control it, so: some part of him doesn't want to have to be there. Doesn't want to have to live through that.
She thinks of all those Shadow Lords who deny themselves closeness, who refuse love, who turn off the parts of themselves that feel delight, joy, warmth, tenderness. They win their mates, the mates they love with all the passion a werewolf could be capable of, and then they go so terribly cold. They see their happiness and recognize it as the thing that could make them weak, make them stupid, make them lose the very thing they cannot bear to let go of. She's seen them transform before her very eyes, pulling away from their mates, shutting that light up in a glass box where it can shine until all the air goes out, but where the winds won't touch it. She has always thought: these kin, growing afraid and resentful, can not see how afraid their wolves are of losing them... by loving them.
As Lukas talks, she thinks of them, and she thinks of being left behind when the wolves do go out and die, when no news comes for weeks, when glorious tales are sung of those who have fallen in horrific ways.
Danicka holds his hand.
"My mother died when I was fourteen," she says quietly. Those words hang in the air, and their waiter brings their beers and mumbles something about their food coming right out, but leaves quickly. Danicka licks her lips, and she doesn't reach for her beer. "She'd been gone for a couple of weeks before a messenger came to tell us." There's another pause, as she looks down, moving her thumb across his hand.
"I know the feeling you're talking about. The one you're afraid of." She huffs out a short, humorless laugh. "It made me change."
Her eyes lift to his again. "It would be different, though," Danicka whispers. "I do understand that."
Lukas"Yeah," he says - bluntly, but not to rub it in. Simply because this is an axis of the truth, a pivot on which this discussion, this conflict, turns. "It would be. Because I'll never change. And that's part of it. Knowing that on so many levels, my hands are simply tied."
They are interrupted again. Their drinks come: two frosty beers set down. It's a different server this time, a waitress that looks at them, sees they're in a serious discussion, smiles but says nothing. Lukas glances up briefly, giving her a smile of thank-you. She returns it. Departs.
He takes a sip of beer, sets it down. And then he takes Danicka's hand in both of his, his head bowed, looking at her fingers as though some grand truth lay hidden in those fragile bones, that fine skin.
"I don't know where to go from here," he admits. "I want to be with you, but I'm afraid. I'm afraid, too, of how things might change in the months and years to come. I'm afraid that even if I can bear it now, I might not be able to forever."
Danicka"I meant..."
Her interruption is quiet, and only because it matters: "...it would be different because a mother isn't a mate," she says. "Because you choose a mate. Because it's a different kind of --"
Danicka doesn't say the word. She quiets again, and looks at the bottle of beer they brought to her, the glass beside it. She exhales, ignoring the waitress, ignoring the flash of possessive anger, teeth-baring, snarling, that wants to rise up when Lukas returns the waitress's smile. Ignores it, doesn't listen to it or even feel it that deeply, but it's still there. It's as much instinct as the longing to just curl up with him physically to offset the pain of a conversation that is hard, that hurts. She feels it, but that doesn't mean she always acts on it.
Her hands turns upward in his palms, fingers curled a bit towards the ceiling, and she looks at his face again. She couldn't explain to him right now that when death comes for the ones you love, it isn't only kin who feel helpless, hand-tied. She can't explain to him how worthless it is when you take vengeance, how great the hope for relief and satisfaction is, how
terribly empty you are afterward, nothing assuaged, not an ounce of pain taken away.
"There are many things I'm afraid of," she says quietly, "that I can't choose to walk away from. And no rules for when to stay and when to leave for the things I'm afraid of but can choose to endure."
Danicka is silent for awhile after that.
"I meant what I said to you this morning," she finally tells him. "About you, and your sister, and not forcing you. But more than that... just for you...."
Her head shakes once, twice, slightly. "I don't want a male who doesn't want me," she tells him. "If you want to go, I'm not going to make you stay."
Lukas"I know," he says. "But people change. Garou change. That may be true now, but in six months, a year, five, ten years -- you can't see that far into the future. No one can."
A hesitation. He doesn't want to say this, almost; doesn't want to broach it. It's not fear of what she might do, but fear of what saying it might do to her. In the end, though, he speaks. He always does. Lukas is innately, intrinsically incapable of keeping his mouth shut on the truth.
"Already," softly, this, as gently as he can, "you get so angry sometimes when I ... trespass against your instincts, I suppose. When I disrespect you. When I turn my back to you. if I told you ten years from now that I couldn't handle it anymore, could you still let me go? Could you take that sort of hurt, that level of disrespect?"
DanickaShe sighs. Her hand slips away from his, and it's not at the end, it's as he's talking about how people change, Garou change, what's true now and what won't be later. She reaches for her beer and takes a drink, letting him talk, but she looks tired. She looks like she's been carrying frustration since this morning, and she has.
"I can't see that far into the future, Lukas," she says. "No one can."
LukasStrangely, that makes him smile. It's tiny, and it's wry, and it's sad, and there's no humor in it at all. But he smiles a little all the same, exhaling.
"No," he says. "No one can."
Their hands have parted. He wraps his around his beer instead. All around them is noise, conversation, laughter. This is a popular place to eat. People like the hearty food, like that it's a neighborhood fixture, like that it reminds at least some of them of where they came from.
Lukas and Danicka look like they're here on a first date. They're a handsome couple, beautifully contrasted. They look like they should be together, but if it's a date it can't be going well. They've barely smiled. The girl just took her hands out of the boy's. He's looking at his beer. She's just letting him talk, letting him think.
At length he says - he asks her, because all he's done so far is raise complaints, make demands - "What do you want?"
DanickaShe regrets leting go of him. But she was angry. She didn't want to touch him with that anger in her, or even that frustration that so easily gets flooded with rage, lighting it up across the spectrum, lighting her up to become something beautiful and terrible.
That is what she is, when she hasn't gone cold. She has extracted the names of spirits before from their very mouths, and done it because it was necessary, because she had to. She has driven those same spirits before her to fight, to scream, to perish for her and her pack and for the war, for Gaia. She has bound them for her own use, too tired or too drained or too angry to cajole, coax, persuade them to give service of their own will. She has seen and done very dark things. There was always a spark left, though. There was always something flickering that didn't extinguish.
She could be called one of the lucky ones, but she doesn't believe in luck, and few but Fianna do. Danicka knows exactly why whatever is good in her has survived intact and only gotten stronger despite it all.
"You," she says, looking at her beer at first, and then at him, looking at him with eyes that ache because he still doesn't understand, he can't possibly grasp how simple this really is for her. What it boils down to. What it's all about. What you will die for and what you won't. What you will live for and what you can let go.
"You," she repeats, quieter this time.
LukasThe truth is, it's probably best that she hasn't told him, yet, how the very thought of him brought her through it all. It's probably best that he doesn't know that even if she was simply in love with an idea, that idea kept some part of her alive, kept some light in her from going out despite the dark places she's been. The dark things she's done.
It would be too much, right now. The awful responsibility of it: of being the one inextinguishable light in someone else's life. And even if that isn't quite it, that isn't quite the breadth of it, he may not be able to see the difference right now. He's still so overwhelmed by who she is. What she is. What wanting her would mean.
Still. Some of that shows through. It's in what she says. It's in the way she says it. You. His eyes come to hers, and their waiter is bringing their food over but he sees them, he sees how their eyes make contact again; he thinks better of going over right now. Lukas reaches out; careful, a little at a time. He touches her hand, and then he wraps his around it.
"Maybe we can try," he murmurs.
DanickaThere is much to tell him that he doesn't know. A lifetime that has stretched longer than most people would count fifteen small years. There is much of her he doesn't know, maybe wouldn't even understand. And she knows she's missed out on his life, missed out on all of it. He reaches for her hand and finds it, wraps around it. For a moment she just doesn't have it in her to hold his in return.
And then she does. It's there, and her hands closes with his, holds his, perhaps a bit tighter and warmer than he would expect right now. She is looking at him. He says what he does.
All Danicka can do is nod, at first.
"That's all I was hoping for, Lukas," she tells him, and this is the truth. Something in the air changes, and their waiter does bring their food over, setting their plates down, slipping away again. "Just... a chance to try, without some other Garou looming over our shoulders, telling me what I could and couldn't do."
LukasLukas's smile is faint, but it's there, and for the first time tonight it's not painful or wry. It's warm, just as her hand is warm, and her grip tighter than he would have guessed. They hold each other like it's imperative that they hold on.
"Okay," he says. The smile grows a little.
And the waiter brings their food - huge plates of pierogis and sausages and sauerkraut and potatoes and cabbage. Hearty peasant food; not Czech, no, but close enough that it's familiar. Lukas leans back, looks at their food. And he nudges his plate a little ways toward Danicka, offering.
"Share?"
DanickaShe's not quite there yet with him. Oh, she was before. She woke up so warm, so happy that to think of it now hurts. He's still here and he's still with her but that illusion that things were okay, that this was something they could both trust, is broken. It isn't back now because he says okay, because he finally grasps that she is not sinking her claws into him and bloodying his life, tearing it to ribbons of flesh and snapped sinews.
Danicka understands that he needed time to process, to think, to work through this and maybe trust her with himself a bit. She just wishes he'd done so before he took her to his bed and made her feel --
not alone.
There's a tightening of her mouth that counts in some circles for a smile, and it's as brief as an eyeblink. "Tell the truth, I'm not very hungry. I ate when I woke up." Which, for all he knows, was this morning after she left, not just a few hours ago. But eat what you like," she says, taking a drink from her beer, which she hasn't bothered to pour into the provided glass.
LukasHe would have to be blind not to see that she's not the same as she was this morning. He would have to be blind not to see that he's ruined that uncomplicated joy for her. She said it herself: she thought he was accepting her. Choosing her. Being hers, and making her his. Instead, he was just giving in to his lust.
Except - it's not quite that, either. If it was so shallow as that, he wouldn't have called her again. He wouldn't have tried to reach out, make contact. He wouldn't be trying now. He wouldn't have even followed her out onto the street when she came to his parents' home. It runs deeper than that. Drawn to you, he said, and it's true. There's something there, something between them,
but it's complex, it's complicated. It's difficult at times. It takes effort to sort it all out. He wishes she were happier. He wishes, to some degree, that he hadn't kissed her last night. Hadn't taken her to his bed. They should have talked first, he thinks. But he doesn't regret destroying that illusion. He suspects she doesn't either.
"Eat a little anyway," he urges gently. "There's way too much here for me to finish."
DanickaNo, she doesn't regret that it was destroyed, if it was an illusion.
She regrets that it was an illusion, and she's not going to get past that easily or quickly. Perhaps not as easily or quickly as he would like her to. She knows he's drawn to her, but it seems like such a shallow thing now. Even if there's more to it than that, even if he flat-out told her this isn't how it was, she does feel... used. She does feel angry. Betrayed. How could he not know what it would mean to her, how deep it would touch her? How could it be like that, between them, only to wake and find him pulling away, telling her he needed to think now, he wasn't sure, he was afraid?
All of it tastes so bitter to her. No, she doesn't regret the shattering of an illusion, doesn't regret knowing the truth. But oh, it's not a happy truth at all. And it's not a resolution she can gently stomach. She wonders if he knows that she is never so careless with her trust, that she recovers slowly if at all from realizing she has misplaced it.
Not in him. Him, she can learn to trust. That was always going to take time.
But how she felt. How she thought he felt, too. She trusted that. And it seems now that it was wrong. Because if it was real, if she wasn't imagining it, then he would have felt it, too, and -- he wouldn't need all this. He wouldn't be questioning, wouldn't be so wary, wouldn't be wanting promises there's no way she can ever keep. Asking her questions that make her gorge rise, because it makes so plain that she's an utter stranger to him. That he doesn't trust her to be in his life, even if he trusted her to be in his bed.
Passing by their table, an unnerved waitress drops one of the three plates of food she's carrying, biting back a curse, rattling everyone around her even more. No one is quite comfortable right now. Lukas, closest to her and trying to get her to share his food, share with him, be close, can feel how wrong something about all this is, and he can feel her
recoiling.
Danicka exhales, and her voice is level. "I'm sorry," she says, and shakes her head. "I'm not very good company right now," she adds, and drinks her beer. She is not, it appears, interested in eating very much right now. "I should go," she says, setting the half-empty beer back down on the table.
LukasLukas's eyebrows flick together. He didn't think everything was okay now, of course. He didn't think she wouldn't be hurt now that he's told her: yes, he wants to be with her. Yes, he wants to try. He knows there's still an ocean between what she felt
(and what he felt)
and what he thinks, what he's afraid of; all the things that make him wary. All the things that make him ask things of her that she cannot give him -- things that, ultimately, aren't even fair to ask.
Still. When she gathers her things to go, he frowns. He aches. He watches her as she takes her bag, as she puts down some money for the pierogis she didn't even touch. He gets up as she's turning to go. He doesn't try to stop her, but he follows her. He follows her from their table, past the other diners, past the bar, past the podium. All the way out to the street, where he finally reaches out to take her elbow, gently. Turns her to face him.
"What can I say," he says - that quiet intensity, again - "or do, to make you feel better?"
Their waiter is watching them hawkeyed through the glass, trying to figure out if they're dining and dashing. He can't hear them, though.
DanickaAs she's gathering her purse, shifting back her chair, Lukas frowns, watching her. He isn't saying anything, and she isn't really surprised by this, wasn't really expecting him to. He's not being an asshole. He's not being rude to her or asking her to forget everything so far, ignore it, 'start fresh'. She might lose her temper completely if he requested something as inane as that. There are no clean slates to a Shadow Lord.
She does stand up, and takes out her wallet from her bag, which feels like a stab or a slap or something painful, handing him a twenty for the beer, the pierogis. Truth be told, Danicka feels like a heel. She wants out of there, wants to go lick her wounds in private, is tired of being around mortals who avoid their table and drop things around her, get into shoving matches on the train because she's there, because she's not in a great mood.
Somehow she cannot match together Lukas saying he wants to be with her with Lukas talking about all these details like there's an answer, like she has some kind of answer to give him for all of it. She doesn't. Not really. Nothing that will satisfy his fears completely. Ultimately all of that is about trust -- and strange as it seems, she does understand why he can't give her that yet. Not completely. Not wholly.
Danicka turns, and she does hear Lukas get up behind her. She takes a couple of steps only, thinking he's just doing the Polite Thing and Rising When a Lady Leaves the Table, but he's following her. She doesn't walk all the way out of the restaurant, at that. She pauses in the middle of the room, turning to him, looking at him. He doesn't have to touch her, take her elbow, follow her out to the street, to get her attention. He always has it. Always.
So it's standing there in the middle of Veselka that he asks her what he does, quiet, and those that glance up think he's trying to get her to stay, apologizing for whatever dickish thing he said to make her get up and leave in the middle of their date like that, but they have no idea. They can't even imagine the world Danicka lives in, or what she is, or what it means for Lukas to be here with her at all. What it means to be like Lukas, standing on the fringes of a world that not a single human in his life can possibly comprehend, reaching out into that strange and frightening and bloody world to touch something that would burn any mere mortal.
Her eyes are on his, and then go past him, looking at their food-laden table. Such a waste. She looks back at him.
"Pay," she says quietly. "Then leave here with me." Her head shakes once, twice. "I can't stay here. I can't..."
and god, the truth in this, the apology and the pride as well, the defiance mingled with sorrow because it puts her that much farther away from him:
"I can't be human," Danicka whispers to him. "I can't even pretend for long. Leave with me," she repeats, the two of them a white-hot point in the center of their own universe, so very close to collapsing, drawing everything in to themselves. "Please."
LukasShe is a flame. She would consume anyone who ventured to close - anyone but those few who were born to endure her; born not only to endure but to be drawn.
Those like her father, and her brother. Those like her packmates. Those like Lukas, who feels what she is, feels her alienness, feels how utterly inhuman she is right now when she strikes him through with her eyes and tells him, without shame and without dissemblance, that she is not human. She can't be. She can't even pretend for long.
What he feels is complex, unutterable. He is afraid of her and afraid for her. He feels strangely protective, like this world is so foreign, so human, that he has to shield her from it somehow. There's too much concrete here, too much metal and glass; things that a flame cannot live in. He feels a little sorry, but he does not pity her.
"Okay," he whispers. He puts his hand on her shoulder gently, a little awkwardly. Then his grasp firms a little. He touches her like this, asserting his presence and his understanding without words. "All right."
He goes. He pays, and it would be such a waste, but Lukas is not wasteful. He has not risen so far above his humble roots that he feels it is right, even some sort of deluded mark of status, to waste perfectly good food. And he is, above all, pragmatic.
So he pays, but he gets the food to go. The waiter wonders what happened to their date. They don't look like they're heading off to a torrid tryst. They look like the date went terribly, and yet
they're leaving together, she's waiting for him outside when he comes out with their food in little plastic trays, capped tight against spills. Lukas looks a little wry, a little embarrassed, as he carries the spoils out. "I didn't want to waste it," he says, a bit sheepish, but it doesn't last long. It sears away. He takes a breath.
"Where should we go?"
DanickaIt isn't shame that makes her confess this to him, because to her, the inability to be human is hardly a weakness. He doesn't understand, can't quite see, so she says it, tells him, but
there's more to it than that. There's something else lurking in the shadows of her eyes, causing them to rustle like leaves in a wood. She wants to kiss him when he touches her, and then she does. She leans forward and she kisses him, warm and full on the mouth but not rushed, not harried or frantic. Slow, and soft, and with something in it that makes a few people look away in instinctive embarrassment at seeing someone else's vulnerability.
Others think: oh. And think they understand why these two are leaving when they've barely even gotten their food.
Danicka draws back a moment or two later and blinks. She nods, and he goes and he pays and she goes and stands outside, eyes closed and head tipped back against the wall. She communes silently with packmates who aren't there with her. And when he comes out, she smells him -- and their food. Danicka steps away from the wall, turning toward Lukas, and sees that he got the food to go and there's a sudden ache in her, a familiarity that she thinks now she can't entirely trust or rely on, but still:
it makes her awkwardly, yet deeply, happy that he didn't want to waste all that food.
"I wouldn't either," she tells him, and it's the truth. She exhales. "Would you be against just coming back to my place?"
LukasThere is that kiss: unexpected, unplanned-for, and yet so slow, so warm, so utterly reciprocal that anyone looking at them would know beyond a doubt what they themselves seem still to be struggling with:
that this is right. This is good. This is what they were made for, and have been made for, over and again.
Those shocking blue eyes of his close when she kisses him. He hardly touches her but for his hand on her shoulder, his mouth on hers, but the kiss is as deep and intimate as anything they've done. Small wonder those that look turn away. Small wonder that when it's done, and she draws back, his eyes are veiled and aching.
They part. He pays. He comes out with food in doggie bags - the irony made him smile inside, only for a moment - and she is not derisive of his frugality. She offers her place. His eyebrows flick together faintly, but perhaps not for the reason she might fear.
"We might sleep together again," he says quietly. "It might complicate things even more."
DanickaThat is, in truth, exactly what she thought he might say. What she was afraid that... well, that he might be afraid of. Why she asked him if he would be against it. He says it might complicate things, and her head tips to the side. She doesn't argue with him that they might sleep together. She doesn't tell him that no, it's okay, they don't have to do anything, reassure him that she won't force him, rape him, pressure him -- as though the idea of her forcing him, pushing him, were remotely possible to her. She doesn't even think he'd be afraid of that, even given what she is.
Even given how much he knows, has known his whole life, that he might end up having no choice in such matters anyway.
Danicka just looks at him. She doesn't deny it. She doesn't give him pat reassurances. She doesn't say it will or won't 'complicate' anything between them. She watches him, the smell of the night air and the lingering smoke from the men earlier and the warmth of the pierogis filling her nostrils. Through all that, Lukas. She could pick him out of a crowd of thousands by scent. She could find him at the bottom of the sea if she lost him.
She says nothing, in the end.
LukasIt must be so hard to be Danicka right now, Lukas reflects. Thoughtful as she is, patient as she is, Danicka is an Alpha, and an Alpha acts. She can't act right now, though. The laws of their world dictate that she holds all the power. So if she wants this to be anything close to fair, anything close to equal, anything close to a partnership and not ownership, he has to make these choices.
It's not easy on him, either. The last thing he wants is to make her feel one way and then wake up and be told something altogether different. The last thing he wants now is to hurt her again, plain and simple. Already, her heart matters.
So she says nothing, in the end. He says nothing too. Moments go by. Then he reaches out, takes her hand. No more comments on what might or might not happen. He nods her on, their dinner warm in its plastic bag, hanging from his hand:
"Let's go."
DanickaThe time outside, and the fact that he said okay when she asked him to leave with her, seems to have given Danicka some of her strength back. The breeze is icy despite the depth of supposed spring, and it moves her hair across her face. She steps closer, taking his hand when he reaches for hers, and they go. Toward Bleeker Street, toward the subway, and down the concrete steps. Danicka doesn't talk, and yes: they might sleep together again, and it might complicate things further, and he doesn't know if he's going to wake up again and feel differently again and if it will only hurt her
again.
It's a possibility. All of it. The uncertainty and the pain. She leans into it where, not so long ago, she was starting to retreat, to run from it. The truth is that when she told him she couldn't be human, he seemed to understand a little. He didn't recoil at that. It's meaningful to her. She can live with that.
It's a short ride on the subway, but it takes them far, rushing along beneath the traffic. Danicka encourages him to open the bags, the lidded cases, so they can eat pierogi on the way. They emerge in the midst of a park, not far from a courthouse, walking back up the stairs. She has a half-eaten potato dumpling in her hand, her other hand still holding his.
"There," she says, pointing upward, pointing to a tall, gleaming, rippling tower south of them, past the treetops. She looks at him. And now she says what she didn't, wouldn't, before: "I'm not expecting anything of you. Other than... for you to be honest."
LukasThis is as different from their first dinner together as it could possibly be. The fare is simple and hearty, for one, despite the restaurant and the locale. They're not even eating at the restaurant anymore, for two. They pop the lid off the box of pierogis and eat with their fingers, sitting side by side on the subway. No one gives them a second glance. He still has his meat combo boxed up, but there's too much broth there to open on a train. It sits on his lap, warm, until they get to their stop.
Half of the pierogis are gone by then. Lukas is eating one with his fingers as they emerge. Danicka is eating another. They hold hands, the bag of food swinging from his wrist. She points at her building. He looks at it, recognizes it from some magazine or other, smiles a little.
"You weren't kidding about liking a view," he quips.
Then she says what she didn't before. And he looks at her, that furrow coming back to his brow, that ache back to his eyes. "I know," he says softly. His hand squeezes hers. "I know that, Danicka."
DanickaHer eyebrows flick, her head tips. She speaks nonverbally, movements of her eyes and her head and her lips. No, says her expression, I totally wasn't. Or it could also be saying: Yeah, well, y'know.
She finishes that pierogi in her hand, licks her thumb and forefinger, walking with him down the boulevard towards the south, towards her enormous shiny building. And she wants to ask him something, and yet doesn't, and so she chooses not to. She is very different from him in that sense: there are times when he can't bear not to say what's in his heart or on his mind, it all comes spilling, rushing out of him. She seems more acquainted with keeping things to herself. It feels like secretiveness, but the truth is, it's rooted in long loneliness. You find there is little to say when there is no one to say it to.
Quietly, they walk on, and she does not eat more pierogis, waiting til they get to her place. They get to Spruce Street, and there stands the still fresh and new 8 Spruce Street, which is only one of its names, a tower that could not help but garner attention and news when it was proposed, as it was being built, when it finally went up. One of those names is New York by Frank Gehry -- the one and only, the loved and loathed -- which is roughly as narcissistic as any starchitect. It's gleaming chrome from the fifth floor up, twisting like waves. It resembles Aqua in New York. It resembles all of Gehry's other buildings in part because, well, it's Gehry. The first five floors are a brick school for pre-kindergartners to eighth graders. There's the downtown hospital. And then over eight hundred feet of shining metal. When they go into the lobby past the doorman, he glances at her, at Lukas, the two of them such a matched set, a portrait-perfect pair, though he's never seen the blackhaired gentleman before.
Entering the elevators, Danicka presses the button labeled '73'. Yes, she said she liked to have a view. The tallest (for now) residential building in the Western Hemisphere would, one hopes, satisfy her.
They positively fly upwards. She takes her hand from his, reaching into her bag for her keys. And when they get to her floor, stepping out into the hallways between the various apartments, she takes his hand again, walking with him to the door labeled 73-C. Pausing there, she turns towards him. Around the corner, a door opens and closes and someone walks toward the elvators, speaking Japanese on the telephone. Danicka exhales.
"I'm glad you're here," she says, and unlocks the door to let them both in.
From the entryway he can see the living room, the vast windows that jut at odd angles outward, and from those windows: basically the entire goddamn city. She could have gotten one with a view of the Brooklyn Bridge from the terrace; she chose one that gives her a view of the sunset from her bedroom, chose one where on a clear day with a pair of binoculars you can see Ellis Island. But most of her terrace looks north and northeast, across the entire span of Manhattan. It is a godlike view. It is the sort of view for a Shadow Lord, rising above it all and looking down in the darkness.
As they step in, she steps out of her boots and sheds her jacket, hanging it up and offering to take his as well, simply because she's standing on the side with the closet. It's quiet inside, and dim, though the city shines brightly through the windows. The interior is so low-key as to err on the side of spartan. The walls in the living room are the same cream color they were when she moved in, no curtains hung anywhere, the flooring made of white oak planks. She has a couch facing the wall where the television hangs, a large black coffee table, a couple of armchairs, a cushioned ottoman. There's a sideboard underneath the television, sleek and matte black wood, hiding all manner of other electronics concealed from view.
Over in a little alcove across from the kitchen there is a single chair facing the windows, and there is a red throw blanket tossed across it. Much of the furniture is white, or charcoal gray, and there are splashes of red here and there. There are windowseats along many of the outer walls, the seats a smooth dark wood, a few pillows here and there.
LukasShe's glad he's here. His mouth moves at that, a small half-smile. Then her door opens and he inhales almost without realizing it. It's an animal reflex, something she'd find familiar: taking in scents before he enters an unfamiliar space.
And it is unfamiliar. And grand. And surprisingly sparse, surprisingly spartan - only now that he knows her a little bit, that doesn't surprise him at all. She is not ostentatious. Her view is godlike, but she does not fill her home with million-dollar furniture. She wouldn't.
He walks in past her. He takes his coat off and leaves it on a coatrack if there is one; in the closet if it's open. Otherwise: on the nearest flat surface, which is also where their dinner goes. Then Lukas steps out of his shoes, and pads around her living room in stockinged feet. If she lets him, he explores. He looks out the windows, he looks around her living room. He observes Manhattan for a moment, pristinely beautiful at this height, a mass of glittering stars fallen to the earth.
He can imagine making love to her on those window seats. Grasping at each other, hushed and needful, gasping.
The little tour he takes of her common areas ends at the chair facing the windows. He fingers the throw for a moment - one of the only shocking spots of true color he can see. Then he looks at her, and this time when he smiles it's a little fuller.
"Thank you for bringing me here," he says. He always was a polite guest.
DanickaTaking a breath to take in the scenes. Oh, she recognizes that. She recognizes the bracing, too, the inhale of air before entering a strange den, a strange place, where he doesn't know quite what is going to happen -- or what he wants to happen. Danicka sees that, or thinks she sees that. There is still that cold stone of doubt in her, doubt of her own perceptions, which -- for reasons he can't know yet -- terrifies her like little else. She has heard the same familiar, beloved voice coming from opposite directions and not known which way to turn. She has nearly lost her mind time and time again. That she is as strong as she is, as grounded as she is --
Lukas says he knows some about the Garou. He can't have met many Adren Theurges. If he had, she would see shock in his eyes every time she speaks, every time she shows herself capable of moving in this world instead of the Other.
They walk inside her high-ceilinged, strangely-walled place, pale and clean. There is a lot of empty space, but the spaces that are inhabited by furniture seem warm. It has a brightness to it, even without the lights on. There are a few photographs on a small table over in that alcove with the white chair, but it's impossible to make out the contents of the collection of small frames. It's impossible to tell what book is lying on the armrest.
(In secret: they are the faces of her family, here and abroad. The book belongs to her youngest packmate, and it is called City of Bones, and neither Lukas nor Danicka have ever heard of it.)
Danicka watches as he walks in, closing the closet where their jackets are hung now. When he passes the kitchen he sees soft chrome, brushed. Honey-colored wood surfaces, bluish-pale glass, black granite to offset it all. It's a lived-in kitchen: there are still some spices left out from when Mire made ollada, dirty dishes in the sink waiting to be put in the dishwasher. A half-empty, stoppered bottle of red wine. Nothing whatsoever on the fridge doors. A yellow silicone potholder hangs next to the stove.
She lets him explore. She likes it that he explores. For her part, she stays by the kitchen counters, begins unpacking the food from the rustling plastic bag. Over he goes to the chair, the alcove, finds Stella's book and the pictures. The pictures:
an old one of her father glancing at the camera, a wry look on his face, working at his bench covered in wood shavings and sawdust, his eyes a bright glacial blue that is shockingly similar to Lukas's own hue. There's a wedding photo, such as it is, of a young man with features very reminiscent of Danicka's, his hair a bit darker and curlier, his smile a bit serious but simultaneously ...well. Wry. It looks like his father's. He's in a black suit, standing with a woman who wears a very simple sleeveless, knee-length white dress. Her hair is black. Her eyes gleam with humor. Two little girls, blonde-haired, twins, standing in a flowery meadow, one hiding her face, the other laughing out loud. It's an old picture. A portrait of a family, a huge family, one serious man and one slightly too-skinny woman, six children from late teens to infancy gathered around them. A picture of a woman, a man, and a lone near-adult son, and the woman looks very much like the woman in the enormous family portrait. A picture of Danicka's mother. She's wearing a suit, a severe expression on her face, her jawline identical to Danicka's, her eyes the same green color. She has caught the camera looking at her, and it gives the twist of her head a furtive look, caught in the middle of time forever.
Her whole family, right there, in six frames.
Over by that alcove there are no window seats, but in the true great room, the true living room, one can sit there and look past the edges of the terrace and see....everything. She liked the units where one could stand at the glass and see nothing but an endless drop. She liked having a space outdoors better. Through the windows, Lukas can see nothing whatsoever on her terrace. Not even furniture. Just a private, rather large, space to walk outside in the open air, above everything. She can stand at the rail and look down, the wind whipping through her hair.
He could make love to her on those window seats, her hands on the glass, his mouth on her neck, her reflection thrown back at him from mere inches away.
Danicka is watching him when he turns back to her. He smiles. She smiles a little at his phrasing, his politeness. "You used to stand up very straight before you left our house," she remembers. "And tell my father: dekujeme vám, ze jste me. Without anyone even prompting or reminding you. So stiff. So insistent on being polite," she says, as she unpacks the food. Her eyes flick back to him. "I'm not teasing you. I just... remembered. I noticed that. You did it every time, like a ritual."
LukasNot for a minute did Lukas think she would mind his exploring. He doesn't go into her bedroom, of course, nor the bedrooms her pack uses. That would be rude. He would consider it overstepping, even if she did not. Nor does he go into her bathroom, riffle through the drawers - anything like that.
But he does pace the space he's been loosed in. He looks out the windows, and he looks around at the dimensions. He spends quite a while at the pictures, his head tilted to one side, just a touch feral himself. He thinks he figures out most of the relationships. Somehow, he loves that she has those pictures there. Her whole family, right there where she can see them every day.
And somehow, it makes him a little sad. It makes it so nakedly obvious how important family is to her. And how alone she is, despite the pack whose traces linger in the air still.
He circles back to the kitchen. He discovers the half-bottle of wine, the remnants of stew. He doesn't peer under lids, though. That, too, would be rude. He comes back to her as she finishes unpacking their dinner. There are a few pierogis left. The meat plate he got is big enough to share in and of itself, so full of food and so untouched that the restaurant split it into two plates. One has the sausage and the potatoes. The other has the stuffed cabbage, the hunter stew.
And he smiles. Not for a minute does he tense, thinking she's mocking him. He knows she's not. "I wanted to be polite," he says, "so your father would invite me again."
DanickaShe ate before she went to see him, and ate with him on the subway on the way here, so Danicka doesn't immediately get out plates. Given how he nudged his food at her earlier, trying to get her to share, she thinks he'll likely invite her to do the same again. What only seemed to hurt her more, make her more angry, at the restaurant endears her in hindsight. She starts to step toward him when he comes back in, then halts herself, her head tipping to the side.
"But you wouldn't play with us for the longest time," she says, as though his explanation makes no sense.
Lukas"You were girls," he replies, as though this explained it all. And pops a pierogi in his mouth. And chews, smiling, his mouth closed of course. After he swallows he adds, "Well, that and the fact that I didn't speak English. Anezka was always braver than I was in that regard. She'd just open her mouth, regardless of what came out. I was ... embarrassed when I fumbled for words, or when I pronounced something wrong. And then after a while, even when I got good enough at English to talk to you, it just turned into this habit. Anezka and you would play. I'd read and kinda get babysat by Vladik.
"I wanted to play with you guys though. Well; not when Anezka was playing with dolls or doing your hair or whatever. But when you were just running around or sharing your crayons." He shrugs a little, beside her now, one hand on the edge of the counter, eyeing the food. "I guess after a while I was just too proud to ask. I was really happy when you asked me to play, even though for a while I thought it was probably because your dad made you so I wouldn't climb your tree again."
DanickaShe laughs. It's a short, sharp sound, a bark of a laugh, quick and bright and open, and the truth is... he's never seen her face like that, caught in the middle of that sound, that feeling. It fairly lights her up. It's different than when she rolled over in his bed this morning and smiled at him, touched him -- or tried to -- and tried to get him to stay with her, be inside of her again, be close to her again. It's not better and it's not less, it's just... different.
"You always could have spoken Czech to me," she says quieter, after he says the rest. Her smile has died a natural, gentle death, and she's reaching for that opened bottle and taking down a couple of glasses from an under-counter slide where they hang. She gets down one, really, then looks at him and gets down a second if he nods. If he does want some, she pours. They never finished their beers.
"I think you were just stubborn about that, though," Danicka murmurs, as she's pouring. The wine bottle sets down. He mentions getting babysat by her older brother, Anezka doing Danicka's hair. He wanted to play with them -- when they weren't being boring.
Her head tips. She shakes her head, watching him. "No," she says quietly. "He thought it was good that you climbed again after that. I think so, at least. He never said anything like that, but ...that's the sort of person he is." A frown furrows her brow. "The sort of person he respects, I suppose." She sips at her wine, turning to lean her back against the counter. With the leather jacket off, she seems so slender in that blue shirt, so physical...yet not quite human. Not human at all.
"That's why I asked you to play after that, too," she tells him.
LukasLukas does, in fact, want wine. So she takes down two glasses, and he watches her pour. The clink of bottle on granite is subtle. He picks his glass, sips, watching her as she speaks.
A blind man would see the chemistry between them. A fool would feel the attraction. Lukas is nothing, and he feels it too. Sees it too. He never denied that, though; never denied that he was sad to think he might never see her again. Never denied that when she walked through his door, he wanted to do
exactly what he did.
Want was never the problem. They both know that, though perhaps only Lukas understands exactly why that is; exactly how his mind works. She leans against the counter, though, and his eyes trace down her body. He wants to touch her. He wants to run his palm over that slender body of hers; pass his hand up her abdomen, hold her breast in his hand while he kisses her.
His blink is a little too long, a brief shutting of his eyes. And he takes another sip of wine, reorients, smiles a little. It's a little bit sad, this time.
"Because you respected me for climbing that tree again?"
Lukas[ahem. Lukas is NEITHER. hurrrr.]
DanickaEvery square inch of this place is permeated with her presence. The small, dark room that they call Josef's is, ultimately: hers. The brighter, airier room where Mire sleeps is also hers. Stella sleeps here or there, with one packmate or the other, but she is a small vicious Ahroun and for the most part, she wants to be in a space that is wholly her own or sharing a space with a packmate. She makes few marks of territory, too young and too black-and-white to tread the nuanced lines in between Mine and Yours. But the chair where she sometimes reads is more Danicka's than hers. The terrace, the living room, the food in the fridge, all of it accepts and even welcomes the presence of her pack, but it. Is all. Hers.
She dominates this space. She owns it, even taking up little more than a square foot at the moment. He walked into this place and though his senses are dulled by his form, the animal parts of his mind can smell her, can feel her here. There's only one way he could be more saturated in her presence, and he knows somewhere in this place is her bedroom, her bed, where her scent is so deeply entrenched, where he knows -- even if he doesn't consciously acknowledge it, his gut knows, his cock knows, his very soul knows -- he would be deemed worthy, and welcomed, and allowed to mount her again,
and again.
They drink their wine. She does not, cannot, read his thoughts at the moment. Perhaps that's for the best.
She looks at him, at his question. She thinks on it. Respected, he says. Admired, she thinks, but that's not quite it either. "Because I understood it," is what she says aloud, the deepest truth pushing its way into words, demanding to be voiced, even
in a whisper.
LukasDanicka owns and embodies her den so utterly that anyone not welcome here, anyone not invited here, would feel instantly ill-at-ease. An enemy, unless he was very audacious indeed, would never dream of facing her here. Even her packmates, who are invited and welcome, would not overstep here. Not even if they were Ragabashes. Not even if they were displeased with her somehow, nipping at her heels elsewhere to challenge or be brought back into line.
Lukas does not feel ill at ease here. He feels welcomed. He feels drawn - but then he always does. He feels steeped somehow in her presence, and like he understands her better simply by being here. Simply by seeing those photographs in their frames, and the simple and wasteless spaces she lives in.
She understood it, she says. A year and a half older, far smaller but far fiercer than him even back then, she understood why the blue-eyed boy who fell from the tree was silent and angry afterward. She understood that it wasn't because she had frightened him, it wasn't directed at her; she understood that he wasn't resentful, even. Didn't want to chop her tree down or burn it to the ground. Nothing like that. Didn't even want to climb its branches to dominate it somehow, win somehow, but because he wanted to push past something he couldn't do. He wanted to be better than his fear.
He wants to be better than his fear. He looks at her with his sky-bright eyes troubled. Movement, rather measured: he sets his wine down, takes a moment to think and consult. And then he closes that space between; he puts his hand on her, his palm spanning the space between her ribs and her navel, bending his neck to kiss her mouth.
DanickaSo far, Lukas doesn't know anything about Danicka's pack except that they exist, that she is their Alpha. He hasn't met Mire or Josef of Stella, doesn't have mental images for them. Just her. Just her, and a single young adult novel on an armrest that, for all he knows, could be Danicka's anyway. It might be telling to him to know that she has no Ragabash in her pack, or there could be so many reasons for such an absence that it is hardly worth speculating on.
But no: even a Ragabash of her pack would know better, or learn better. She is viciously protective of her space. She's brought him here, though, right after he hurt her, and she seems... comforted. Just to have him here, and see that he's relaxed enough to go exploring, padding around on socked feet, looking at her things and her space, looking through her windows at her terrace and at her city, at her territory. It makes her ache to see him here, because it makes it happy. Such things can sometimes be painful.
Lukas perhaps hasn't guessed yet: he could overstep here. In private, where no wolf or kin can see them but the ones she trusts most, he could push back against her with far more freedom than even in his own apartment. It seems backwards; it isn't. She's so safe here, herself. She's completely protected, and because of that: he can be free. But he might not know that yet. Danicka, in truth, doesn't have words for it.
She's watching him as he thinks. Her head tips to see his eyes so tumultuous, so stormy. She doesn't understand, can't read him this clearly right now, isn't delving. She sees how he sets down his glass so deliberately, so thoughtfully, and is reminded again of the boy he used to be, so serious and thoughtful and methodical. Danicka sees him thinking, and she expects him to open his mouth and tell her things, unleash his thoughts as he has before, but
then he steps closer to her, and her breath draws in, is held a moment, as every other thought in her head flies away.
Perhaps it should bother her that he stops to think, that he seems to be pushing past something. It doesn't. She thinks she knows that what he's pushing past is useless anyway, is offal, is a hindrance. Perhaps it should bother her that he is pushing past fear of her, but: it isn't. It isn't fear of her at all that Lukas is trying to not be ruled by. It's something far more nebulous, and far deeper, and far more important: he is only, really, fighting against himself.
There's also this: she saw his eyes earlier, tracking over her body. Saw something flickering in them as he stood by her windowseats. She saw it because she was looking for it. She saw it because of what he said in front of Veselka about how they might sleep together again. She's invited this male into her den, and there's something primitively blatant about that. He has to know, has to imagine, has to understand her well enough at least to know that this is a rare thing for her.
So no, she doesn't pull away, aching, asking him if he's sure, warning him that she might not be able to stop, might not want to. Out there in the human world it hurt and she was afraid and what if and maybe he might and, and, and. Here, in her den, the male she wants touches her, lowers his head to kiss her, and all she can do is respond.
It melts her. He can feel the relaxation in her spine as he puts his hand on her torso and puts his mouth on her own, feel her breathing and how warm she is, bleeding through her thin shirt. Her hand comes up to touch his face, very lightly, her fingers touching his cheek briefly before sliding around to the back of his head, moving into his hair. He can feel her with his tongue and his breath as she holds back a low moan of relief. She keeps silent. She kisses him slowly, forces herself to kiss him slowly and kiss him warmly, though he can feel her almost quivering from all that restraint.
She goes slow. Lets him move as he will. If it's just a kiss: that's all right. If it's just this, just for now: it's okay. It's enough.
Not really. But she'll make it be.
LukasThere's such tension, such restraint, in these moments. His hand touches her. It's not openly erotic; he's not stroking her breast or reaching between her legs. But he would never touch a stranger like this; would never touch a friend like this. It is intimate, and their bodies are so warm. Such heat builds across that thin, thin layer of her shirt.
She's so slender, so taut, that he can all but feel the quiver under his hand - like a wild animal, muscles bunching to presage action. His mouth touches hers, too, and
oh, it's so slow, it's such a slow, opening thing. His lips part and so do hers. It's nothing like the kiss last night, which was sudden and warm, like a monsoon from the skies. This is tender, explorative; cautious. A little, a sip. A pause.
He breathes slowly. He breathes evenly, but with care. He looks at her across that space. They are neither of them speaking. His eyes are darkened; so are hers. After a moment he kisses her again, and this time his head tilts, the kiss is so much deeper, he steps closer and they're still at an angle; her side is obliquely against his chest. It gives his hand room to move, though it doesn't. It simply spreads, his fingers opening, his palm pressing more firmly to her body, feeling every rise and fall of breath.
DanickaHe isn't stroking her breast, he isn't lowering his hand to unfasten her jeans and touch her between her legs, make her wet, bring her off right there in the kitchen, but some part of her wants him to. Danicka isn't shy about sex, isn't even restraining herself now because she's uncertain of whether or not he wants her, not sure if it's morally or ethically all right to fuck him, and it actually isn't about making sure he doesn't feel overwhelmed by her, trampled by her, caught up in her like a whirlwind.
She is a whirlwind. A storm. A monsoon. And he would not be here if he could not weather it. They never would have gotten through that first night. No: Lukas isn't that weak. Lukas isn't that afraid, even. Not of this.
Danicka doesn't hold herself back now even because she's afraid to be rejected again, even in some subtle bodily motion. She isn't afraid that he's going to hurt her, leave her, break her heart. Her heart has broken before. She is not made of glass. She knows how long she can bleed from a wound before her very nature closes it, heals it, makes it like it never was. She has known war and madness and grief. She has gone into the spirit world and summoned each by their names. She has met them face to face in this world. No: she is not afraid that he will break her heart. She knows, even if they part now,
they will meet again.
The truth is: she restrains herself right now because she wants this, too: the slow kiss, the melting limbs, the way they begin to breathe together. She tastes it all, to remember it, to keep it away. But it doesn't mean she's patient. It doesn't mean she doesn't still long to simply open his shirt, open herself, be with him again. All the same:
Danicka sighs, exhaling as his hand opens, her lips still touching his when they open to whisper: "Dotkni se me. Prosím, dotkni se me."
LukasHis eyes are closed when she whispers to him. She's so close to him still, and somehow it's more intense like this. His eyes closed. His hand on her body. Her scent in infusing his every scent. Her breathing a palpable thing against his mouth, against his hand, against his torso.
They open, though, at the words. Shocking blue, they look at her; search for her. This time when he kisses her his eyes are open, at least until it deepens. At least until sudden ache furrows his brow, and his eyes shut. He finds a button blindly, and he undoes it. And another one, just enough that his large hand can fit, just enough that he can slide his hand under the fabric and touch her where she's golden, touch her where she's warm and smooth and sleek.
He remembers how she looked in his bedroom, naked, pulling him over her. He remembers how she looked when he met her, wholly clothed, except for those wedges of skin above and below, like a riddle to be solved.
Lukas makes a sound, a low sound that sounds almost like anguish, when his hand finds her breast. He touches her, obeying not her words but her want, and his own. Her heartbeat is a hammer against the heel of his hand. He touches her, he cradles her in his palm, he kisses her until the force of it overtakes him and he's bending her back over the counter, he's kissing her neck now, he's shifting so he's facing her, their bodies pressed together, his free hand reaching down to grasp her thigh and pull her leg up around his hip. Closer: he pulls her closer.
Lukas[*koff*
"Her scent infusing his every sense."]
DanickaThey ate all the pierogis. They've forgotten about most of the rest of the food, still waiting in takeout containers. They've forgotten their wine, just a few sips taken and their glasses set aside so they could have this. She wants to show him the rest of her den, keep no secrets or sacred space away from him, but: that can wait, too. It can wait with the food, and the wine, and the rest of the world. It's late enough that it's dark outside, late enough that she's awake and alert and whole, complete. He's been up for going on fifteen hours now, working hard for the majority of that.
She would also like to take him to her bed and just let him rest there. Keep him near and keep watch over him, keep him warm and know that he's safe. Close, and safe, and hers.
Danicka doesn't ask for that, though. Given the choice between Lukas asleep and Lukas here, now, with her and touching her -- it's not even a question. It's not even a thought in her head. She opens her eyes when there's that brief pause, feels his eyes opening to hers. She looks back at him, her hand still on the back of his neck, cradling the base of his skull, and if there are words between them --
no. No words. Something else.
He returns to her. Kisses her again, and then more deeply, and she responds to it, returns it, leans into that warmer, hotter kiss until it grows unbearable. Lukas finds one, two, three, four goddamn buttons of her shirt to undo in order to get his hand in her shirt, but here is the gift: they are, though spaced close together many in number, not buttons. They are snaps, which burst apart when he tugs on them with a metallic crack, and Danicka is leaning into him now, gasping once softly into his mouth when he slips his hand in and touches her breast. He feels the fabric over it, impossibly thin and light and hard to make out; it's barely even there. Whatever it is is so thin he can trace the edges of her areola with his fingertips, read her flesh like braille.
Danicka moans, finds him making that sound at the same time, and her moan changes to a soft laugh, welcoming and warm and tinged with longing. She kisses him again, deeply, stifling both their voices, pressing into him as he bends her back, pushes against her. She shudders when he moves to kiss her neck, reaches for her thigh and hikes her leg around him, the edge of the granite pressing into her back but she doesn't care, she doesn't, she
moves against the front of his jeans, denim scraping together, and her free hand curls like talons in the front of his shirt.
LukasIt's that shudder that drives him. That way she squirms against him that pushes him on. His hand slips back out of her shirt, and then he's catching her up with that hand under her thigh, with the other gripping her hip. He pulls her up off the floor, lifts her up onto his body. Her hair falls over his face. He strokes it back, pushes his fingers into all that cascading gold, kisses her when he finds her mouth again.
They can't seem to stop kissing. They kiss over and over, their hands tracing each other's faces, bodies. He loves it when her hands are on his face, stroking his brow and his cheeks, delving into his hair, wrapping around the back of his head to hold him right there as she kisses him like he's sustenance, like he's air. He sets her on that counter. The stone is cool beneath her, but he's so warm, and his hands are so warm, and he's still kissing her as he finds her buttons.
He works with his hands every day. Incredibly delicate work in the midst of intense pressure: it's become second nature. Even now he's so sure with his fingers, thoughtlessly precise. He flicks open those buttons, one by one by one by one, opening her shirt up from bottom to top, but at those last two, three buttons he seems to lose his way - his knuckles are brushing against her skin over and over - he pushes his hands under her shirt,
pushes his palms over her skin, cups her breasts through that fascinatingly thin bra for a moment, wraps his arms around her.
"Lay back," he whispers. He's urging her down, down, his mouth is on her neck and drifting down her collarbone. "Dovolte mi, abych chutnat vám."
DanickaThis time it's not a single maddening button. It's a long series of snaps that, all the same, Lukas undoes one by one, slow and methodical and -- well. Maddening.
Danicka gasps at his hands moving over her, lifting her, and she wraps her legs around him when he picks her up like that. Her shirt is half-open, her neck bending, mouth looking for his when it lifts off of her throat. They don't tell each other not to stop; they just keep kissing, finding each other again and again like they have in life after life, always as though they never know when they'll be pulled apart.
Not tonight, at least. Danicka holds onto him with her legs and with one arm, reaching between them to start working on his shirt herself. Buttons. Actual buttons. She is deft and she is good at working blind but all the same she nearly rips each button from its mooring, opening his shirt as far as she can before her own body and the place where their bodies meet interrupts her. He sets her on the countertop, and truth be told there... isn't much room. Anyone who really liked to cook would be shit out of luck in this kitchen, which is mostly appliances and very little workable space. She leans forward, kissing him, hands in his hair, while he undoes snap after snap, after snap.
The bra she's wearing is sheer. Black. That's why it was so thin: the mesh is incredibly fine, more like translucent fabric than anything else, and he can see right through it, see every shadow and curve of her tits. She is still opening his shirt, her mouth moving to his earlobe, kissing his jaw, trailing onto his throat. Lay back, he tells her, warm palms on warm skin, warm voice in her ear. She shivers as he pushes into her, starts pressing her downward, and she is in the middle of giving another soft breath of laughter when
he switches to Czech, and tells her what he wants to do.
Danicka's eyes roll back at that, the breath and the laughter catching in her throat. Her hands tighten momentarily in his hair, her body giving a great shudder against his. She lifts her head and kisses him then, hard, as though he's already gotten her taste and she is stealing it back from his mouth. There's a sound, however muffled, that is nearly a growl. It only lasts a moment, this kiss, more ferocious and hungry than any she's given him yet, but she
doesn't lie down. She pulls back after a moment, looking at him with his partially-opened shirt, his lips red from kissing her, his eyes searing, and exhales. "I want you to fuck me in my bed," she tells him, her voice low and heady, delirious even, a voice from a dark dream. "I want you there," she adds, and this is the same, but it's not the same. It's an entirely different desire.
LukasSo ferocious and hungry, that kiss, that it drags another moan out of him, a muttered sound low in his throat. Leaves his eyes a little dazed when she draws back, but then they fix on hers and that fire is focused again. She has his shirt most of the way open. The fabric is rumpled where her hands had bunched it. His chest moves with every breath - the thick muscle, the broad ribcage. Fuck me, she says, and the words are like matches into gasoline. In my bed.
He nearly snarls as he kisses her again. They meet like stormfronts colliding, and this kiss is a tearing, agile thing. His hands are all over her. That bra of hers drives him a little insane. He didn't know she owned lingerie like this. He doesn't know so much about her, but
being here, being with her like this in her home, where so much of her is bare on the surface: he feels like he knows her a little better. He does.
And - swiftly, unwaveringly, he lifts her again. They never really stop kissing. He doesn't really know where the bedroom is, and he can barely see because he keeps putting his mouth on her, her mouth and her neck and her sternum, and at one point standing in the middle of her living room he hoists her up, he puts his mouth on her tits, sucks her nipples right through that translucent bra of hers. She has to guide him, has to pant this way or not that door, has to put her hand against her wall once so he didn't run right into it. They make it there, though. They make it there, and he drops her back on her bed, and any other time he would want to look around, would want to see what her private space is like, what her den is like, but
right now he wants to see what she looks like under those jeans. He's undoing the button, sliding the zipper down. Maybe her panties match. His eyes are on hers, he's working by touch, his eyes are on fire. He wants to see what she looks like when he puts his mouth on her again. When he tastes her. He licks his lips, savage as a wolf; he can hardly wait.
DanickaStanding outside of Veselka, not sure what was going to happen when he walked away with her, Danicka tipped her head back and communed with the stars, with her totem, and with her packmates. They were in her den, waiting for her. Eating leftover ollada, asking her if they could meet him, if she was bringing the male back, if they could see him and talk to him and sniff him, if he would eat with them. It isn't even excitement, for them: it's almost a need. It's similar to a longing, and she can't explain that to Lukas. My packmates want to sniff you and get your scent on them and their scent on you would sound a bit odd to someone steeped even for a few weeks in human life. That complete strangers would want to share meat with him and be close to him and make him part of their family would be so bizarre, so unnerving, that she's not sure he could accept it, and then they would be hurt.
So, head tipped against the wall of the little restaurant, she told them to go. Not in words, even: she held her den in her mind, empty and quiet and hers alone. She gave them pictures and sensations of solitude, privacy, wound-licking and communion with silence, and they understood. Their Alpha is a Theurge. In the end, sometimes no wolf can understand a Crescent unless they are one themselves. They are more solitary. The pack accepts this. Loves her in spite of it and also because of it.
Now the den is empty and quiet and hers alone, except: the two of them fill it with their heat. The sound of their mouths kissing and Danicka moaning and Lukas gasping fills the air, rebounds off the glass, with no other sound to muffle it. This place is hers, deeply hers, but she is sharing it. Opening it to him,
irrevocably.
That rush is back again, the two of them crashing together in the way that only two people can: not wave to a shore, rain to a wall, or even hot and cold air meeting and swirling around each other to unleash chaos and destruction. This is singular in the world, this sort of meeting: only living, breathing, eating things do this, in lovemaking or war or any other struggle for survival. This is what it comes down to. This is what it's about:
she cannot live if he doesn't touch her now, kiss her now, love her now. She can't breathe if he stops. And the truth is, and she knows it: he'll die if he doesn't meet her here, in this. Something vital will go out of him. Somewhere, not so long ago, they crossed a line between what might happen and what must happen. Somewhere, they crossed a line between fear and want, want and ...need.
Lifted against him again, Danicka wraps around him, kisses him, parts her mouth just long enough to gasp: down the hall which isn't much to go on but there's really only that first hallway that he knows of, stumbling back that way, but they don't make it far. He picks her up, holding her by her ass against him, kissing all the bare skin he can find, searching for her tits with his mouth and suckling on her through the gauze-thin silk of her bra. She quivers like a bolt has struck her, toes to shoulders, her nails digging briefly into his shoulders, her mouth gasping as though she's searching for his name like a drowning woman searches for air, but can't find it, can't do anything but sink back down, finding solace in the darkness with him.
She kisses him, hard, so hard that he nearly slams both of them into a wall and she laughs, she laughs but she grabs that wall and just kisses him again, never asks if he should put her down or if she should walk or don't drop me, she just laughs like none of it matters, like she doesn't care,
because it doesn't, and she doesn't.
Her room is dark and there's a window and a bathroom and he'll look at all of it later. See all of it, perhaps when there's light, and explore like he did her living room, but for now there is a warm dark room and the front door is locked and there is a bed, a massive and low and sprawling bed with soft, rumpled covers and her scent everywhere, fucking everywhere when he drops her to it and comes down over her.
Danicka arches her back, lifts her hips, to help him work her jeans off, work them down,
see those matching goddamn panties, the strip of black cotton between her legs where he'd most like to see her, the sheer fabric over her ass, her hips, stretched below her navel. She's shrugging off and yanking her shirt away even when he's putting her down on the bed, helping him get her jeans off, peeling, stripping them off, and she's in nothing but lingerie now and he's still almost completely dressed.
Danicka wants this. Oh, she's though of it more times than she can count, and truthfully: she's thought of her mouth on him, his cock in her, how he'd taste and feel there, how he'd let his head roll back and moan for her, lose himself to her. She's thought of this, too, though: her fingers in his hair, his face between her legs, his shoulders under her knees. "Oh, god," she breathes, barely more than a gasp, looking at him from where she lies.
"Off," she murmurs, and it's as much as she can manage, though perhaps it helps that she's starting to sit up, she's touching his shirt, yanking more of it open, pushing it down his shoulders, stopping in the middle of this very important work because
he smells so good, and she wants to
do what she does, which is
lick his nipple, suckle him, tattoo a moan into his flesh.
LukasThere will be time later. Time for him to explore her bedroom as he had her living room and her kitchen. Time for him to explore her, too, to run his hands slowly over her body until her skin grew as familiar to him as his own. Time to sleep. Time to rest. Time to take the time, and to simply... be.
Not now, though. Right now, they can't wait. Off, she says, which is as much as she can manage, but he understands. She yanks his shirt open as he undoes the buttons. She touches his body, sweeps the fabric off his shoulders, and he exhales all in a rush. Her mouth is on his chest, her tongue is curling over his nipple, and he's panting, the broad pectoral muscle under her lips catches and quivers for a second. Then he flays the shirt off his arms and leaves it on the floor, grabs her with his hands behind her head, pulls her up, kisses her again, harder.
This is daring of him. Perhaps he does sense how much farther he can go here, here where she's safest, here where no one else can see. The way he kisses her is nearly aggressive, and then he pushes her back, he comes down over her, his breath rushes out in a pant. He's at her neck, he's at her breasts, he's unhooking that bra with those dexterous hands of his, pulling it down and putting his mouth on her with a sound like he's waited for this. He sucks at her until she arches, and then he follows that arch of her body down, pauses to kiss her lower abdomen just inside the point of her hip.
Pauses again, breathing unsteadily, to peel her panties off. Off, off. He bares her, he looks at her, he can't seem to help himself when his fingers rub over her. He touches her until his fingertips are all wet, and then
it's like she imagined, her knees over his shoulders. His fingers spreading her open. He puts his mouth to her, those gas-flame eyes close, he moans against her cunt like he's the one pleasured by this, like he's the one getting something out of it. His tongue is on her clit; he kisses her and he sucks at her, he licks her slick up and now his arms have wrapped around her thighs. He's holding her right there as he takes his fill of her.
DanickaThis room is dark, the only light coming from the window, the city outside. Shadows take the color from their skin, turn them into marble, into granite. She feels so warm, though, as he finishes the buttons on his shirt and she pushes it off and caresses him, touches his chest and his arms, makes him gasp. Danicka moans, could do this forever, except he grabs her, kisses her, eats at her mouth like an animal, and she realizes
that this is worth it. If every single time, he pulled away after, if they couldn't even talk without it feeling awkward, if he never got along with her pack, if he couldn't bear the word 'mate', this would be worth it. If he were hers, and hers alone, at least in this. If they could get this right, and get it this right, then it would be okay. It would be worth everything else.
She doesn't shove him away. She doesn't punish him for aggression, for dominance, for whatever you might want to call it. He's pushing her down and her hands are on his shoulder, on the back of his neck, pulling him down even as he comes over her. He can see for a moment how she fights a snarl of want, how her teeth are on edge, but then his mouth is on her neck and she's lifting her hips to rub herself against him, reaching between their bodies to grab his belt, yank it open as though she's forgotten what he wanted, what he laid her down for.
Lukas hasn't.
Danicka's hand is at his waist when he unhooks her bra, his belt opened up and the tongue and buckle dangling when he gets his mouth on her bare breast. She loses touch with what she was doing. Her eyes close, her body melting to his, hips squirming while he sucks on her. She makes a sound, plaintive, almost keening, as -- yes -- her spine arches, pushing her closer to him. He leaves her bra where it is, the straps askew, the back undone, the cups tugged off her breasts, kissing down her body, kisses the soft spot on her hip that nearly makes her buck. Danicka is watching him now, lying back, her eyes coming open and staying on him, drowsy and overcome.
For the second time, she lifts her hips for him as he draws her clothing off of her. Her breathing is unsteady and audible, her chest moving with it, and as he starts touching her, finds her rhythm, finds just the right point of pressure, her eyes close again. She turns her head, moaning softly, moving with his hand, one hand curling to grip her bedcovers. Her legs open a bit more for him, and all that cascading, rushing, frantic lust starts to unwind in this pocket, this space they've created that feels very much outside of time.
Her face is half-buried in her comforter, the sounds she's making getting more ragged, more lost, more incoherent. She barely even notices when he lifts her legs and gets on his knees, when he spreads her lips with his fingers, but
oh,
she notices when he starts to lick her. Her toes curl. She shudders, lifting her hips, pressing against his mouth helplessly before dropping again, squirming again. She's not very still. She restrains herself at first, rolls her hips in circles, but then she can't
she can't
clearly she can't help it, and her hand slides into his hair and she starts... well: fucking his face.
LukasWhen he puts his mouth on her, he can feel her restraint. It hums through her, turns her into a live wire, twisting of its own accord. She doesn't have to hold back. He wants very much to tell her this: she doesn't have to restrain herself. She can let go. He can handle it.
He can handle this.
So he lifts his head. He kisses the inside of her thigh, where her skin is so silken, so warm. "It's okay," he whispers. He rubs his cheek against her. The bristle on his jaw scratches a little; perhaps in the future he'll remember to shave before going down on her, but
it's not like they planned for this. It's not like they knew it was coming.
"It's okay." Again, that, a shred of sound in the darkness, almost lost beneath her breathing. He kisses her again: her lower abdomen this time, just over that neatly trimmed patch of hair. "Let go."
And then, kissing her again, lower. Opening his mouth, putting his tongue against her, licking her, eating her, devouring her like he's the wolf here, he's the predator, and she is
not prey. She could never be prey. Her hand is in his hair now. He groans; the sound vibrates through her. She moves. She's fucking his face and he's taking it, he's giving as good as he gets; this becomes a fiercely physical thing, a silent wrestling as her thighs tighten and his hands pull them apart again. He shoulders his way up, muscles his way onto the bed, slides her toward the headboard, moves over her. Now and then his eyes blaze open, look to find her face and the way she's turning it to the side, the flash of muscle in her neck, the rise of her chest with every breath. He watches. He watches all of it, almost snarling against her cunt, reaching up with his hand to caress her breast when he feels her getting closer, winding tighter; touching her with his hand, almost soothingly, a devastating counterpoint to the way he's going at her pussy.
Which is, frankly put, without mercy. Without pause. He stays on her. He stays with her. He wouldn't let her squirm away if she tried, but she's not trying, she's grinding on his face so he works her with his mouth, fucks her with his tongue, pushes her until tension sings through her, until she's an incandescent arc in her bed --
and then he pushes her farther.
DanickaThat restraint only lasts a moment. And the truth is:
Lukas lifts his head, kisses her thigh, and Danicka's moan turns into a growl. She flexes her hand in his hair, doesn't grab, but runs her fingers deeper, and moves her body to his mouth again, searches for it blindly, and, well,
he doesn't really have to tell her twice. Or even once. He just has to not stop.
So he eats her, those long legs of hers soft over his shoulders, her pussy rubbing against his mouth, and neither of them are thinking, even a little, about the tribe or the pack or the other kin or anything but this, anyone but each other. There's something fierce and ferocious going on in this, where neither is really dominant, neither is servant, neither is any less of an animal than the other.
Danicka is lost. She does start to close her thighs but he pushes them open again, and she moans. She stirs, resistant, when he starts to move around, move her, change things when she's in that rhythm, in that lost place, and the sad truth is that it does sort of break it for her. She doesn't really mind. She pushes onto her elbows and slides back as he comes up on the bed with her, lies back down in her pillows when he goes back down on her, finds her again. Her hand massages his scalp.
And she lets him. Lets him please her, lets him lick her, taste her, lets him touch her breast while her slick wets his tongue, lets him stroke her with his hand. She clenches and he can feel it, see it, and no: she doesn't try to squirm away. She does pant, not grinding as much on his face now, but she takes her hand from his hair, and she doesn't push him back. She just lifts herself up, and draws her hips back, and takes her legs off his shoulders. She's still half-wearing that bra, hanging off her biceps, when she puts her hand on his arm and
pushes him onto his back. Her eyes are dark, like deep woods in a rich, wet, summer, as she looks at him, stares at him, climbs over his midsection, kneels straddling his waist, her hand on his chest as though to hold him there, hold him down. The little triangle of hair between her legs is a brassy dark blonde. Her nipples are rose-colored. Her bra slips down her arms and around her wrists, laying shapelessly on his chest.
Danicka doesn't say anything. She looks so much like an animal right now, despite the gold glinting in her earlobes, the way she's staring down at him, watching him as though she's not sure what he's going to do next, or what, frankly, she's going to do with him.
It is a little unsettling. There is also something unbearably erotic about it.
In the end, what she does is this: she comes down over him, quickly, and kisses him. It's no delicate thing, little finesse left to it. She licks her taste off of him, kisses him to give it back, brushes her tits quite deliberately against his chest because she likes how it feels.
LukasThere's an odd moment of vulnerability when she draws back from him. She can see it: his eyes uncertain and guileless for a second, wondering if she was leaving, wondering if he displeased her somehow, wondering if he ruined it for her when he moved her, wondering if he should wipe his mouth now before she would want to kiss him again.
She pushes him onto his back. His worry dispels like a fog in the sun. He thumps down on her bed, his shoulderblades to the mattress, his hips lifting off because he's reaching to undo his pants, pushing them down as far as he can reach. She straddles him. He puts his hands on her waist, strokes her up and down, touches her as she's staring at him with her wild-animal eyes. She doesn't move. That uncertainty creeps back. It feels odd, to be stared at like that, to have everything come to a halt and be watched like that. He feels suddenly scrutinized, suddenly pinned, suddenly lessened. Less himself; more...
objectified, perhaps.
He opens his mouth to ask her, starts to ask:
"Is something -- "
-- and she comes down over him, folding quick to him, kisses his mouth. He didn't need to wipe his lips for her after all. She kisses her taste off his mouth, kisses his taste into her mouth, rubs against him until he lifts his hands and covers her breasts, fondles them in his hands as she kisses him. He's still a little unsure, and it's there in his kiss, a bit of hesitation, a bit of holding-back that wasn't there a moment ago. His brain is working again, and he's thinking, wondering -- he isn't quite sure, suddenly, where or who she is.
He puts his hand on her face. He gently pushes her back. Their mouths part. He opens his eyes, and he looks at her. He needs a moment just to look at her, and find her.
"What were you thinking?" he whispers. "When you looked at me like that."
DanickaThe vulnerability does not key her in. He is vulnerable. The truth is: so is she, right now. So much so that she's not quite sure what to do, or how, and that isn't something she's used to when she's naked in bed with someone. But she can see that he's wondering a half-dozen thoughts now, where he wasn't before, when he looks up at her and she looks down at him. She can feel it brush away -- a little -- when she moves him over, crawls on top of him. The sight of his hands reaching down to get his pants off makes her cunt clench again, even without his fingers, his mouth, pleasuring her. She smiles a little, at the edges of her lips, as his hands run over her. Somewhere in there, her bra gets tossed off the bed, off his chest, away.
And she can't stop looking at him, has no idea that she is looking at him almost like prey when the truth is: she does not quite know what is happening to her. What he's doing to her, why she has no words, why she feels so caught up in midair, motionless in time. Her eyes are so dark, so wild, and she wants him so badly.
So she kisses him, because the thoughts coming to her mind are painful and hard and wild, swirling into and crashing against her lust, but he isn't kissing her back. Not really. He does touch her, warm caresses of his palms on her breasts, and she moans a little to feel it, feels welcomed but
not quite. Not entirely. Something is off, and her lips part from him, her face pulling back a half-inch, an inch, two. He doesn't have to push her back, though he might still. She doesn't go very far. He finds her. And he speaks to her. She moves her head, she can't quite process the words or give him an answer.
But she doesn't ignore it. As hot as she is, as wanting, she doesn't ignore the question, push down his pants, stroke his cock in some naive attempt to get him to forget he ever asked. She doesn't degrade this like that. Danicka does look at him, and a pained expression moves through her eyes. "I wanted to be with you," she whispers. "Closer than...your mouth on me. I wasn't sure if you'd try to stop me, when I ...made you stop. And I --"
Everything she's saying is so stilted, so odd, every word a struggle to pull it out of her thinking, more human brain. "I just wanted to look at you for a bit."
Her eyes close, though, even though it's at odds with what she just said. Her hands are still on his chest, her body so close, as she takes a breath and exhales. Opens her eyes again to find him. What she wants to ask, she's afraid to ask. It might wake him up and take him away. It might make her seem so weak.
"We should slow down," she whispers to him, and somehow it come across: she does not mean they should try to falsify a restart, go on little dates, pretend to be a mortal couple, do normal things, talk a lot about their feelings. That isn't what she wants, or means, at all. "It's so...
"Mad," is the word she comes up with, finds. Her head shakes, the descends, as she curls it against his shoulder, kisses his neck. "I don't want you with me only because you've lost your mind."
LukasIt feels a little like heartbreak, listening to her try so hard to put human words together. Listening to her say, finally,
that she wasn't looking at him like prey, like meat, like some male she was going to fuck just because. She was looking at him because she wanted to. She just wanted to look at him for a little while, here in her den, here in her bed, here where he's hers.
He's drawing her down before she even begins to move closer. And so they move together. His heart is hammering. Her breath is still catching now and then. But they move together, and he wraps his arms around her, and she lays her head against his shoulder. He rolls a little to the side. He lays his lower leg over hers, and he closes his eyes.
"Okay," he whispers. A deep breath: in. Out. "Yeah. Let's just..."
His thoughts fray apart for a moment. He kisses her: her mouth or her face or her brow, whatever he can reach. Touches her face, combs his fingers into her hair.
"Let's just be for a while."
DanickaHer bed was rumpled when he first carried her to it, put her down on it. Right now he has a moment, space to breathe, and he could look around -- but he doesn't. The bed is warm and soft and large, and she's right there, utterly bare, her cheeks still flushed from arousal. His hair is rumpled, his shirt on her floor, his belt hanging open, his jeans still in the way. She looks at him, and he touches her hair, and he whispers okay. She leans in to kiss him, though his eyes are closing and he's talking about just being, except his hands are still touching her -- her cheekbone, her hair.
Danicks licks her lips as they kiss, and kisses him again. Her body moves closer, her hands on his back stroking downward, moving under the waist of his jeans, touching his hips. "Not stop," she murmurs, pushing at the denim, at the elastic beneath it. The kiss is certainly slow, less rough than before, but oh: it's not chaste. There's nothing light about it, nothing to offset the invitation in it.
Somewhere in the back of her mind, she is still thinking that he doesn't have to be at work til noon. Thinking that she's going to die if she doesn't get him inside of her again. Her body slides down against his, her hands sliding around to the front of his jeans, undoing the button, drawing down the zipper. Her mouth moves to his chest.
LukasNot stop, she clarifies, and he exhales a half-laugh. Then she's kissing him again. Then he's putting his hands on her face, threading his fingers into her hair; she's sliding her hands down his back, under the waistband of his jeans. It makes the skin on his back shiver. It makes those taut, narrow muscles low in his back pull.
And then, just as he's about to roll her under him again, she undoes his zipper. Lukas exhales a panting breath, his head lowered to watch her hands move. He still remembers the way she stroked him that first time: so sure, so fearless. He raises his head and kisses her. He's wearing boxer briefs under the jeans, and they're charcoal-grey as most of them are. Lukas's sense of style is not ostentatious, but it's there.
He lays back as her mouth goes to his chest. His hand is still in her hair, cradling the back of her head. His hands help hers: pushing down his jeans, getting them down to his thighs and then his knees where he can kick them off. He takes her hand, lays it over his cock if she hasn't already moved there herself. When she touches him, he makes a sound, involuntary: a low, caught groan as his fingertips flex unconsciously at her scalp.
DanickaNot stop. Not lie together, touching each other's faces, kissing softly in her bed while she's naked, while she's on fire, while she can still feel where his hand and his tongue touched her pussy, while she can smell the lust in his sweat. Danicka kisses him, and touches him, pushing for more without clawing for it, and he laughs like that. It makes her arch her back a little. It makes her press against him while she touches him, pulling him by the hips closer to her til his jeans and her cunt are in contact, though she doesn't rub against him just yet.
She undoes his zipper. Her tongue is light on his tongue, no longer exploring but drinking, drinking him in, thirsty for his mouth, gasping for it. He looks down at her hands and she kisses his face instead, kisses his neck while he watches her slender, deft hands move: so confidently, so surely. They kiss again, and for just a moment, she reaches into his jeans and caresses him through his boxer-briefs, feeling how hard he is with her palm, stroking him just twice. Slowly. Up and down. Up and down.
And he lays back, letting her touch him, letting her put her mouth on his chest again, kissing him there, licking his nipple like she did before but less rushed, less starved, teasing out from his sounds and his motion what he likes best, what makes him feel best.
Together, they push his pants down, and away, and he gets them off, off, kicks them to the bottom of her bed. She smiles against his chest when he slides his hand down her arm and moves her hand back to his cock, back here, touch me here again, please,
though he doesn't say anything. Danicka does stroke him though, untroubled by the way he does that, unbothered, her dominance as a wolf untouched. His hand tightens in her hair. She gives him the gentlest squeeze through his cotton underwear, kissing down his chest, licking the ridges of his abdomen. He has time to stop her, she thinks. If he doesn't want her teeth or her starving, predatory mouth anywhere near him. She gives him plenty of time to stop her, if this frightens him. If it bothers him. Even when she tugs his underwear away from his body and down, careful not to let it snap back against him, she moves slowly. Her hair is cool where it spreads along his hip though, across his thigh as she takes him -- bare -- in her hand, licking him from base to tip.
LukasLukas knows exactly what Danicka is up to by the time her lips are tracking their way down his abdomen. The thought first flickered in his mind when she kissed his collarbone, kissed his chest; it solidified as she descended the rungs of his ribs, sheathed as they are in muscle and hot skin. If he was going to stop her - if he was afraid of her mouth near that most sensitive part of his anatomy - surely he would have long ago.
But he doesn't. He props himself up on his elbows as she works her way down, the musculature of his stomach standing out, one shoulder tensing against his own weight. His hand is still in her hair, and he touches her gently, lovingly - or at least, he tries. She moves his boxer briefs out of the way, bares him to the cool air of her bedroom. He's so turned on his breath is shuddering, he's trying not to tremble. Then she puts her mouth on him,
licks him from base to tip,
and his face changes, his brow contracts and his eyes close and his lips part with a low moan he can't seem to hold back. His hand drops from her hair. He grabs a fistful of comforter and sheets instead, bunching the fabric in his hand. In her hand, his cock moves like a living thing, beating with his pulse, jerking with raw arousal.
DanickaHe likes to watch. She likes that, has noticed it already just in the past couple of minutes: he wants to watch her undoing his jeans and stroking his cock. He wants to watch her lick him. She hasn't even bothered to get his underwear all the way off, has left it clinging to his thighs just above his knees. Lukas tries not to tremble, isn't making a sound, as though he's afraid he'll startle her, afraid she might stop. Or maybe it has nothing to do with that at all.
Danicka licks him. He dissolves. She doesn't stop, though, is closing her mouth around his head, wet and warm and loose, running her tongue over him, reveling in the texture of his skin there. Her eyes have fallen closed. She wraps her hand around him, strokes him slowly along with her licking, and begins to suck on him. Her breasts are on his leg, her leg over him, her body warm -- no, hot -- against his.
LukasThey've slowed down. They most definitely have not stopped. They're lying half-entwined in one another's bodies, sprawled across the entire length of her bed. She's stroking him, sucking him off, and as slow and languid as it is it's driving him a little crazy.
She's right. He likes to watch. He watches her like he's hypnotized, like he can't help watching even when that ratchets up the intensity almost beyond bearing. His body is tense - his abdomen under her free hand, his flank, his thighs under her torso. He's trying so hard not to buck against her mouth, trying so hard not to put his hand on her head and simply fuck her face. That tension is shunted into his hands, into his fists gripping the covers, into the fast harsh slide of his breath, the short sounds he makes, gasps and grunts, groans when she touches him or licks him just like that.
"Oh god." Barely more than a whisper. Barely moments after she started loving him like this, and his hands are on her face after all, he's pulling her up, urging her up, up, come back. "Stop. Stop. Come here,"
and his mouth meeting hers, solidly, without a shred of unease or disgust: a kiss so sudden that he has to try hard to keep calm, stay slow. It parts a little. His heart is pounding through his chest. He looks at her. He looks a little lost; overcome. "I need to be inside you," he says.
DanickaTo either side of him, her mattress and her pillows and her thick, soft bedding stretches out for what feels -- at the moment -- like miles. The entire room around them could be a universe in and of itself, enclosed in the dark, nothing in existence but their two bodies. Her mouth on his cock. His hands in her hair. Danicka moans around him, her hand moving to his hip, all but pulling him further into her mouth like that. She could do this forever. Just play it in a time loop, keep it just like this.
Even without words, she knows. Even before Lukas manages to speak, she feels what he wants as though it's translating through his fingertips into her skin. He barely touches her face but that she's sliding her mouth off of him, shaking his hands off of her cheeks, looking at him, and she isn't asking him if he's all right, what's wrong, because
somehow, she knows.
Danicka crawls up over him, his hands moving over her, finding her already on her way where he was trying to draw her. She spreads her legs over his lap, leaning over him, kissing him just like she was before, when he stopped her, when he was so uneasy, only that's gone, now. All she can hear is come here from him, all she can feel is him drawing her nearer, kissing her like he's going to die. She moans into his mouth, her legs spread over him, her cunt brushing against his cock even as he's saying -- half saying, at least -- that he needs to be inside her.
She nods, that's all, just nods quickly and kisses him again, taking him in her hand, guiding him to her, taking him, taking him inside of her, moaning into his mouth as she does.
LukasThat moan is a shared sound. It vibrates between their mouths, caught on their tongues. He wants so badly to take her by the hips and drive himself into her, as fast as he can go. He wants, also and achingly, to protect her somehow: his hands come instead to her thighs, supporting her, slowing her, easing his penetration until their bodies are firmly pressed together.
He wraps his arms around her then. He keeps her close, as though otherwise she might fall away from him. He doesn't even have it in him to kiss her anymore - his face is close to hers, his mouth open against hers, but he's just breathing, just panting, just trying to survive. The first time she rolls her hips is a revelation. His hands clutch at her back. He groans, a wracked sound, and his mouth slides from hers to fall to her shoulder. He bites her there, firmly, gripping her in his teeth as she moves again.
And now his hand is falling to her hip. He holds her still a second, just a second, just enough for his mind to come back together. Then - and shamelessly - he encourages her. Urges her to move, to ride him, to fuck him like that
even as he begins to move in counterpoint.
DanickaSome part of her wants to: wants to just sink down on him, take him, make their two fleshs melt together til no science or magic could separate them, but he stops her. He slows her down, eases himself into her, eases her onto him. And another part of her, greater and wiser, loves him for it.
Yes, loves. It doesn't echo off her tongue, not yet, not now, not when neither of them quite know in any rational sense what is going on here or what will be or what they need to do to preserve each other and themselves. But that part of her does love him, knows she loves him, and knows also not to murmur it in his ear before its time has come.
Danicka wants to move, tries to move, but his hands are still clutching at her, holding her right there. He is wrapping his arms around her and he can't move his lips but she's kissing him there, kissing his face, kissing his neck while he holds her, licks his throat because he isn't letting her move. He loosens, though, can't help himself, can't remember what his arms are for, and so she begins to roll her hips. Begins to fuck him, begins to ride him, propped up on her hands and elbows over him, moving even when he grabs at her, even when he seems like he can't bear it, even when
he bites down on her, groaning into her skin.
She gasps a little, and her teeth go on edge, and she wants suddenly to fuck him very hard, fuck him til the top of his head shatters, til his mind and soul break out, spill across her bed, til he is annihilated here, and now, by ecstasy. She wants to show him just how much an animal she is. How much an animal he is. Danicka groans, though, and turns her head, setting her teeth right in his neck, where it bends and flows down into his shoulder.
And begins to fuck him. Begins, gaspingly, to fuck him like that until she can't hold him, can't hold him in her teeth, can't let him keep her down there with him. Minutes pass and her body moves faster on him, faster then, as she lifts herself up, hands on his chest
like before, yet not,
and starts riding him, their pace kicking higher every few moments til her headboard is thumping against the wall, til there's not a single sound to be heard except the ones coming out of their mouths, involuntary and ragged.
LukasStartlement makes Lukas gasp as Danicka's teeth find his neck. Startlement, and the instinctive tension of a predator's jaws closing, because no matter how slender and lovely she looks in this form, no matter how fine and even her teeth are, she is a wolf. He recognizes her with every drop of blood in his veins.
It's not fear, though. It's on the edge of it, but it's not. He's tense for a second. Then he moans against her shoulder, because she's fucking him now, she's working her hips in that maddening rhythm, taking him into her tight cunt over and over and his hands are grasping at her back, he's leveraging his lower body and pounding back against her, harder,
the headboard is thumping against the wall, that pressure of her teeth is transforming somehow from something alien and a little threatening into something so raw and erotic that he can't take it, he can't even think about it, he can only react.
He reacts: kissing the side of her neck suddenly, biting her again, gripping her shoulder in his teeth as his hands drop to grip her ass. He holds her. His hands ride the rhythm of her hips, feel the impact of his body against hers, and into hers. He's fucking her back with every bit as much energy and tension she fucks him with. They don't speak, but the sounds they're making are more ragged by the moment, ramping up, and even if she were blind, even if she could not feel,
she would still know how close he was to his orgasm by the way he sounds. He's making sounds like he's trying to speak, like he's trying to tell her something, but in the end they're just groans, they're just grunts, they're just muffled vowel sounds that he hides in the flesh of her shoulder as his hands shift again. He wraps his arms around the middle of her back. He holds her like he's afraid she might get away, she might leave him. He holds her, and, holding her, manages to form words after all - fragments, anyway:
" -- going to come. Oh god -- "
DanickaIt isn't very long that her teeth are in his neck, set in his skin. That gasp, that startlement, makes her hesitate, and yet the way he keeps moving into her makes her forget to do anything but fuck him, hold him, hold onto him. One would look at her and not be able to imagine the kind of would she really is, dark as nightfall and even quieter. She's so golden, so bright, but those fingernails turn to claws, those squared-off front teeth turn sharp, those incisors elongate, that skin turns to thick black fur, and she becomes something visibly savage.
Yet savage she is, even now, riding him like she's hunting, like she's hungry for something that must be chased, harried, driven down to the ground and devoured. She holds to him, and he feels her clench and release on his cock, feels her teeth clench and release from his neck, sees her breasts and the way they move as she lifts herself from him, uses his very body to steady herself as she rocks on top of him.
Til he can't bear it, and pulls her back down. Runs his hands over her back, grabs her ass, holds her with his teeth again. She doesn't bite him again. Doesn't need to. She has him, and something about this does not bother her, his teeth in her skin while hers are not, while she is squirming on top of him, using his cock and his body and the way he sounds and the way he smells and the way he holds her as fuel, as fire.
She's not there yet. Oh, she's not far, but she's not there, and he's groaning like he's going to die, he's trying to tell her he's going to come, and so she licks his neck, she touches his chest, she grinds her pussy down on his cock like she knows, she knows she knows she knows he's going to lose it, he's going to arch his back, he's going to come for her, come in her, moan like he does, lose his mind underneath the sound of her gasping, panting, moaning right back to him.
LukasStrange how familiar this can feel when they're still so very new to each other. Strange how even now she is beginning to memorize and remember these flashfire reflexes arcing through him: the way his body tenses, the way his hands pull at her, the way the musculature of his torso contracts so forcefully and involuntarily that his entire body bends to hers, curves to hers as though to keep her somehow. Be closer to hers somehow.
He doesn't even try to be quiet. She has neighbors, he's sure, who recognize the cadence of the headboard against the wall. But this is a new building, an expensive building, a well-insulated building, and besides - he doesn't really have the presence of mind to care right now.
He doesn't try to be quiet. He can't. He's an arc of tension under her, driving into her at the moment of orgasm, holding, clutching her close and all but roaring against her shoulder, against her neck. All instinct now in the immediate aftermath: pounding into her over and over, coming into her, wrecking himself into a thousand fragmented pieces; not a single coherent thought amongst the flotsam.
He's aware of her, though. He knows she's there; can feel her, can smell her, can hear her. Would recognize her even if he recognized nothing else.
This sort of rhythm cannot be sustained. Eventually it's too much. His senses overload, he slows. He stops. He falls back against her mattress, sweaty, spent, panting for breath. His eyes are closed, the four chambers of his heart thundering, his chest moving to bring air to his blood. It's only moments before his eyes open again, and before he's even coherent he's looking for her. Finding her eyes. Raising a suddenly strengthless hand to her, wrapping his palm behind her head, drawing her face to his. Closing his eyes again.
DanickaDanicka drives that pleasure into him, twists it until he comes, revels in it as it rushes through him, out of him,
into her. She clenches down on him as he comes, caught against his body with her own bent, angled, flowing til there's almost no part of him that is not in contact with some part of her. She bucks against him, and she's not being still, she's not slowing down as he comes, she's still working herself on him, still fucking him, aching for him.
And her neighbors can't hear a damn thing. This wall is ridiculously thick, pressed against the hallway and not another apartment, and that's part of why this is her room, part of why the layout works this way, and if her neighbors could have been hearing her for any amount of time -- they would have heard worse things in this place. So: no matter, there.
But the headboard does smack again and again on the wall, and Lukas does roar, moaning, mindless, holding her hips as he fucks himself into her, again and again, and Danicka's voice is almost lost under the sound, except her lips are close to his jaw, her voice winds around his ear, into his thoughts, fills his mind with the sound of her own pleasure, her own orgasm, coming moments after his, except
it lasts so much longer, and he's got precious seconds where his mind is being blown apart before, coming down, he realizes she's still moving, her pussy is still winding on him, she's still gasping, riding him, whimpering in the dark, bouncing that tight, hot little cunt on him while she comes.
LukasSeconds. There are only seconds in which he can come down from his own orgasm. Seconds in which his mind can piece itself back together, before
she starts moving again. Or he realizes she's still moving. Or something, he's not even sure which, he's not sure of anything except that it is too much. The sound he makes is wracked, rough, it bounces off the ceiling and vibrates through his chest. She's still moving on him, bouncing on his cock. It makes the muscles in his thighs jump; it curls his toes, and then -
then he flips like a fish, like a shark, sleek and powerful, puts her under him and pulls her mouth to his shoulder, grabs a fistful of sheets with his free hand. Pounds her, slamming his cock into her, fucking her through her orgasm like that's what he's made for, this is what he was shaped for and built for: her pleasure, her climax, her release. Never mind that his mind is blowing apart into dust, never mind that he thinks he might die like this, he thinks he might go mad, he thinks he might open his eyes when it's all over and see all the contents of his heart and mind strewn over the bedsheets.
DanickaLuckily, luckily, the headboard is good for gripping, perhaps later they'll find it's good for linking chains or scarves or ties through, he could grab hold of it if he liked or grab hold of her if he liked but he chooses the bedding. The down in the comforter crushes in his hand, so soft it's nothing, he's grabbing air, he's got nothing left to hold onto anymore, not when she's moving like this.
So he flips her over. And she's so close, she's so damn close already now, and when her back lands on her mattress, springing them back against each other, she turns her face to the side and moans aloud, almost wails, as he starts to fuck her the way he does, grabbing her in his teeth, opening her legs with the weight of his body.
Nevermind what she said earlier. She doesn't care if he's here because he's lost his mind. She doesn't care if they turn into mindless animals when they have sex. As long as he doesn't stop. As long as he gives it to her like this, drives her over the edge like this, licks her pussy and lets her suck his cock and touches her hair and groans while she bounces on him and turns savage at the end, after all this time, all this lust, building and weaving together like it has.
She's coming when he does this to her: turns her under him this way. She's already caught up in it, whimpering, moaning so loudly, her throat open, her back arching, killing him so, so
innocently,
while some part of him knows he's going to die because of her, die because of this, neither of them caring.
Near the end she's whimpering, every little breath a gasp, catching in her throat, and she's putting her hands on his back as though to plead with him to stop, stop, it's okay now, stop, it's over, and he can all but collapse on her and all she will do is hold him. Hold him right here, arms and legs around him, face seeking some cool corner of the pillow, panting for air, and it's never enough.
LukasThey've barely said anything to each other. All their communication comes in the subtle, savage language of motion, of touch. Her hands on his back gentle him. He slows, finally. He lets himself slow, and once that relaxation begins it's a cascade reaction disseminating to the very ends of his fingers. He all but collapses. His body is heavy against her, solid and weighing between her thighs, against her torso. He is still inside her, softening, still twitching now and again, moaning past her ear every time he does.
He reaches for air. His lungs pull for it, his chest heaves for it. It's never enough. She turns her face toward some coolness, some relief from the pleasure that's almost destroyed them. He turns his face toward the sheets, but every breath is saturated with her. His hand traces her side, sweeps up her front. Cradles, finally, her breast, holding her like something precious and rare.
No words now, either. He can't remember how to speak. He barely remembers how to think. He remembers how to kiss her, though, and he does: his lips finding any part of her he can reach. Her shoulder. Her ear.
Perhaps it's not possible for them to make love without losing their minds. Perhaps it's simply not possible for two creatures so eminently suited to each other, so utterly and intrinsically paired by every natural law there is, to make love without recognizing the fact and going a little mad from the enormity of it. All Lukas knows is that they tried to go slow. They ended up here anyway, shattered on the shores of their own attraction, grasping for breath and reason that ever seems out of their reach.
DanickaThis was different than the first -- the other -- time. Somehow. The same in many ways: the wildness of it, the sheer need, the way it was so hard to stop themselves, impossible in the end to stop themselves, unthinkable. Different, though. And she is not falling asleep now, he is not gasping for her to stay, don't move, stay. She does not think to tell him, ask him, to stay the night with her. She is thinking: he kissed her, and touched her breast, and carried her to her bed. He is not going anywhere. She doesn't think about this morning.
Lukas is kissing her, and Danicka -- oh, this is insane -- Danicka laughs softly, her eyes closed, her neck tilting to bare more skin to him, invite more of that, more, yes, kissing. She is smiling, loosely and lazily and happily, even though her body is trembling from the aftershocks of pleasure. His hand on her breast, cradling such a small part of her and yet making her feel that he is cradling all of her, holding her, still close to her.
She touches his hair, the same in all possible worlds, though now her fingers don't stroke hair off his forehead but run up the back of his neck, massage his scalp, feel the silkiness of his hair, marveling at it silently. They tried to go slow. They ended up here anyway. She is somehow, bizarrely, satisfied by this. Happy, because of it.
After awhile, she slides her legs down his sides. She stretches them out, which makes her cunt clench relentlessly on his cock. She arches her back, stretches her arms, relaxes again beneath him, strokes her toes along his calf. Her head turns, her eyes opening, her arms flopped above her head. She looks at him, her eyes gemlike, gleaming, glittering, half-lidded in an absolutely animal way: she's sated. She's looking at him like that again, just looking at him, but it feels a little like being studied til he remembers:
she just wanted to look at him. See him, here in her bed, here in her body, and let that feeling suffuse her.
Danicka lifts her head from the pillow and kisses him, quick and soft and tender, on his lips.
LukasA secret little shiver creeps down his spine as her fingers stroke through her hair. In this world, and in all others, this has always felt so close to him. So tender. She has held that word, love, in her heart already. But she will not say it, not until he's ready. Still: that is when he feels, when she touches him like this.
And: when she relaxes under him. When she stretches under him, squeezing him inside her like that. He makes a small sound, vague and overcome, but then is soothed. Her toes stroke his calves. Her legs feel so smooth, he thinks inanely. And, when her eyes open: the pupils are so large, the irises so green.
She is beautiful and alien. A wolf and an animal, who cannot even pretend to be human. His eyes open a little ways, and he looks at her, half-dazed, half-drowsing, until she kisses him. Then his eyes close again. He returns that kiss, makes it something not so quick, just as soft. Just as tender.
In human terms, they have settled nothing. They have talked a lot without coming to any real resolution. They have no idea where they're going from here, what their long-term plans will be. Right now, though, none of that seems to matter. His hand moves a little on her breast. He holds her, cradles her, keeps her warm. Shifts a little so that he isn't quite crushing her anymore,
and relaxes. She's right. He's not leaving. He's not going anywhere.
DanickaThat kiss is, especially after what they just did to each other, remarkably playful. She is happy. She is content. Warm, well-fed, well-fucked, happy. Those kinsmen, those horrible men who brag about fucking 'their' females til their docile -- they do not know how to really deal with exactly what Lukas is seeing beneath him right now. She isn't docile. She isn't tamed. She's simply happy. She's close, and this is good, and maybe he has no idea how something like her could be afraid, but sometimes she is, and it is good to feel safe and know it's the truth. It is even better, then, to know that he is safe, to feel it, to not have to fear for it.
Her legs are smooth, her eyes so verdant. He kisses her back, and she closes her eyes, letting him take her back down to that softness, that melting tenderness. She sighs softly when it ends, when they part, when he moves his hand on her breast. She looks down at his hand there, smiles, and her eyes close and open in a slow blink. She keeps touching his hair. He says nothing. She sees no need for it.
It's early yet, at least for her. But she knows when he woke up this morning he'd had scarcely four hours of sleep. She knows that he worked for eleven after that. She knows that then he met her for dinner, they came here, she knows how long his day has been and she feels how limp he is, how his muscles have all unknotted. She kisses his temple, stroking his hair again and again. He hasn't even left her yet.
"Spát, Lukás," she whispers, nuzzling her face along his. "Spát tady. Budeme více mluvit pozdeji."
LukasThere's a part of Lukas, small but insistent, that did not want to fall asleep right after they made love. He doesn't want to be that guy that fucks a woman and then crashes out without so much a word. Particularly when they've said so much and settled so little. Particularly when so much is still up in the air, uncertain. So he resists it, keeping himself grounded in the moment through sheer willpower, but the truth is
it's a losing battle. He is exhausted. He is warm, and satiated, and content, and -- safe. Such an odd word, that. He used to always associated it with certain human standards. Harlem is not safe. The Upper East Side generally is. It's not safe to be in a dark alleyway at 2am. It's generally safe to be in the hospital, surrounded by sterility and bright lights.
Werewolves are not safe. Humans are, but
she is not human. She can't even pretend. And he feels safe all the same, and it's not merely the lack of danger but something bone-deep, a recognition as instinctive as breathing. He is safe here.
Danicka nuzzles him. She tells him what she does. The last threads of his resistance are dissolving, dissolving, gone. He takes a deep breath, and when he releases it the final motes of tension are released. He is large and solid and warm and limp, and in seconds he is asleep.
Hours pass. Night deepens. If Danicka rises from bed, if she goes to the kitchen and pours a glass of water, if she eats their dinner, if she brushes her teeth and showers - he is dead to all of it. He doesn't even stir. If she should leave, though, and if she should come back, he welcomes her back into bed. It is instinctive. He doesn't even wake. He winds her back against his body, slumps against her,
and sleeps.
Eventually day breaks. Eventually light comes back to the sky, and he's been asleep for twelve, thirteen hours. He never made it under the covers. He never bothered to wash, or brush his teeth. He pulled the blankets over himself sometime in the night, but that is all: a half-cocoon, half-cave of her bedclothes that he slept with her in.
It is nearly nine in the morning when consciousness pulls him from the depths again. And, stirring, the first thing Lukas does is pull into a long, slow, crescendoing stretch.
They talked a lot. They settled almost nothing. It is on his mind again here in the light of day, and when he opens his eyes he is almost solemn, he is quiet and serious as he was as a boy. But he is not resistant. He is not afraid, the way he was yesterday morning. Somehow, everything seems just a little less immense. Just a little less intimidating.
He finds his lover with his eyes. It is almost soundless, not even quite a whisper:
"Hi."
DanickaThe night is her time. The sun sets and she wakes, stretching, breathing in deep. She looks out her window as it goes down, sinks into her animal self as she watches Helios sink below the horizon. Luna plays the coquette, showing herself only partly or completely veiled unless her anger is roused, unless her rage awakens. And that is when Danicka moves about, that is when she lives. She slept most of the day while Lukas worked. She lies with him as he falls asleep, gently easing herself off of him, stroking his hair as he descends.
And then she stays. For quite a long time, in fact, she stays. She pulls a sheet over him, which is easy enough since the covers were already so rumpled when he got here. The room is still warm from their lovemaking; she likes the way he looks under a sheet alone. For awhile she stays, her hand over his hand, facing him, watching him sleep. She tries to be quiet, and still, and not bother him, but soon it becomes apparent that he is dead to the world.
Danicka smiles. Her thumb strokes over his hand. She leans across and kisses that hand, but then she draws away. She goes into her bathroom and washes up, takes a shower with the door mostly closed but open a crack. She checks on him after; he hasn't moved. She brushes her teeth and goes to her kitchen, wearing her robe. Her packmates sniff at her mind, checking on her, and she communes with them silently as she puts food in the fridge, then withdraws from them once more.
Back in her bedroom, she gets dressed. A pair of gray boxers with red pinstripes, a plain white t-shirt with a v-neck and a small pocket over the left breast. Her hair slowly dries, and she notices a faint chill in the air, so she draws the comforter over Lukas as well. He sleeps on, kept warm. She goes to her windowseat and works on her laptop for awhile; the typing doesn't seem to bother him. She answers queries that have been sent to her; she names quotes. She reaches through her reflection in the darkened glass and gives a message to a crowspirit, sending it flying to one of her brethren at the sept. She catches up, essentially, on work. There is always something to be done.
But: a couple of hours before sunrise, she looks at the horizon and she seems to know. She isn't exhausted, not even close, but she is tired. She breathes in deep and puts her work away, closes her laptop, and goes crawling under the covers with him. She goes to bed early, slipping in beside him and finding him stirring then, only then, and only to wrap himself around her. Danicka finds this very...very relaxing. She closes her eyes. She goes to sleep, the sun-shades drawn against the harshest glare of the light without diminishing her view of the city at all.
A handful of hours later, Lukas wakes. Danicka is in the middle of another cycle of sleep, her body utterly limp next to his. He can smell how clean she is. He can feel her t-shirt, her boxers, her smooth legs, her even breathing. He smells wretched, sex and sweat and sleep and the pierogis he never washed out of his mouth. He wakes and thinks, though his arm is around her, of how little they've resolved, how little they've settled. His mind has come back to him, and yet he's still here. In her bed, holding her, like his body knew better than he did.
And there is no fear.
Danicka doesn't wake immediately. She senses the change, though, senses some movement, and turns slowly onto her back. Even slower, opens her eyes. Looks back at him.
Hi, he whispers, almost silent. She smiles, a slow spreading thing across her lips, and closes her eyes, flopping her head back to the side. "You have bad breath," she teases, and shifts her toes under his legs, rubbing them on his calves, tickling his ankle with her toes.
LukasLukas's mouth moves. A smile, equal parts abashment and amusement. He shifts in her bed, rolling onto his back so he's no longer venting his halitosis in her face. To make up for that distance, he wraps an arm around her, pulls her to his side. Pulls a pillow out from under his head and lays flat on the bed, looking up at the diffuse light that coasts across her ceiling.
"I don't have a toothbrush," he whispers - something like an explanation. "Sorry," he adds.
She smells clean to him. She's dressed, at least partly. She must have left the bed after he slept, he reflects, and then come back sometime before he woke. Quietly, uncomplicatedly, he appreciates that she did that. That she came back, so he didn't wake alone.
He's quiet, then. His eyes are calm, his profile untroubled. But quiet, still; a little unsure of what to say now, or if he even needed to speak at all.
DanickaThey... snuggle. And already it's a far cry from yesterday morning, waking up and finding him drawing away, looking at her like she was a wild animal clawing across his sheets, telling her he had to go, warily and weirdly asking if she wanted to stay, or...something. He's staying close this time, and she's curling to his side, drowsy still, not quite entirely awake. She breathes in his scent, and it's not fantastic, but she doesn't mind. He smells filthy, and he smells very very much like himself, drenched in her. It is a good smell.
In the quiet, and with enough light to see by now, and with his mind unhazed by lust, he can make out the details of her room. He will see more as he gets up and moves around, but this space is large, the ceilings high. The bed is a California King at least, enormous enough to fit three, four people comfortably. There's the short hallway they walked through to get to her bed, there's the door to the bathroom.
Soon enough he'll have to go in there, look around. Pass the little linen closet in that entry hall. Her bathroom is gleaming, all expansive mirrors and brushed-chrome fixtures, clear glass bowls that serve as sinks above the counter rather than sunken into them. He'll find how strangely human she is, with little things like makeup and deodorant and hair products and the round plastic case with her birth control pills in it all over the counter. Lavender towels on bathhoks, plus black bathmats in front of the sinks and in front of the glass-enclosed shower that spans the opposite wall. No tub -- not for the master bathroom, apparently.
Her bedroom itself, the room he is lying so comfortably in now, is painted a soft dove grey against pristine white molding at the flooor and ceiling. The floors, here and in the rest of the apartment, are white oak. There are no curtains on the enormous windows, only those retractable solar shades. The bed they're lying in is set into an alcove in the wall, protruding from it into the room. It was not made when they came in. The sheets are a pale, pale grey, lighter than her walls, and her covers are thick and purple and dark grey, charcoal grey. Something about how tossed-about it is makes it inviting, even moreso than the softness of the covers. There's a thick candle on one of the nightstands rather than a lamp. There's a journal with a pen on top of it.
From beneath the bed there's a thick rug to warm the room and the wood floors. The bed itself is made of some black wood, the frame simple and low and with a headboard that forms a grid against the wall. There is other furniture in here, too: a small desk over in the corner where the windows meet the wall, a laptop on top of it but closed. A bookcase beside that desk. Like the great room, windowseats along the glass that Danicka has added several pillows to. There is a mess of items on that windowseat: a pot of black paint and a pot of white paint, a calligraphy brush resting on a shallow and traditional porcelain bowl, a long and razor-sharp black-handled knife beside a whetstone, the knife obviously for work and not for show. There is a basket with gourds in it, the style you might find in craft stores anywhere, and small leather bags. A collection of glossy black feathers. Glass vials stoppered with cork. She works there. She does very strange things by that window, among her pretty pillows.
There are also clothes on the floor by the closet, which hangs open, more clothes than just the ones they tossed off of each other last night. Danicka is not the tidiest person about her living space. Clean, yes. Tidy, no.
She stretches against him, nuzzling his chest. She wants to tell him she's horny again, already, waking up to him like this. But the truth is: she was horny when she woke next to him before. Told him so in no uncertain terms, invited him to stay and fuck her all morning, sleep longer with her. And as she reached toward him with that, he recoiled. She hasn't forgotten, even if she isn't really thinking about it right now. All the same: she doesn't tell him he should fuck her again, right now.
"I'm sure we can find one for you somewhere," she murmurs. "Are you hungry?" she asks, her eyes opening, her eyes finding him.
LukasSoon enough his eyes begin to track around the room. While she stretches, while she nuzzles his chest - a gentle and pleasurable, pleasant sensation, the tip of her nose and her lips brushing against his skin - he studies her bedroom. Explores it with his gaze the way he explored her living room with his steps, with his hands. He sees the soft, neutral color of the walls, which is reflected and brightened in the sheets. He sees the color of her comforters, which were merely dark last night. They are still dark, but with texture and hue now: thick, rich, welcoming.
He studies the candle for a moment, and the pen. Both look well-used. And he looks at the desk; the odd little accouterments on the windowseat. The clothes spilling out of the closet, clean but untidy.
Little by little, he gathers clues about her. Shades in his picture of her, which began with just an outline: Shadow Lord. Theurge. Adren. Female.
And with: playmate. once upon a time.
She asks him a question, and this brings him back to the present. He stirs, reaching back to tuck one hand under his head. He smells like sweat and sex, and his skin is faintly sticky. He is, in human terms, rather gross. She doesn't seem to mind. He doesn't seem so self-conscious about it after all.
"A little," he answers, quietly. "But I have time."
That's a rare luxury for him. He looks at the ceiling a little longer, then at her.
"Did you have to go out last night? After I fell asleep."
DanickaIt's telling that the beginning of his vague image of her began with tribe, with moon, with rank...and only then came back to the physical reality of her body, her shape, her familiarity, his own memories of her. She was so different as a little girl. Not very quiet or withdrawn, actually quite bright and happy and chaotic, changing her mind at the drop of a hat, changing the games she would play and the rules of those games seemingly at random. Maddening. But oh, exciting also, intriguing, because regardless: she had so much fun. Anezka did, too.
What has remained is her weirdness. How set apart she is, how different, how ...untouchable, in a way. Except he's touching her now. Has touched her so deeply, as deeply as a person can. And she's touching him, too, playing by some kind of rules, holding back that which might scare him, listening more than she talks, taking her time when once upon a time she was hardly patient at all. With anything. Anyone.
No wonder she doesn't clean up her room.
She blinks, and lifts her head to look at him when he asks that. "I wouldn't have left you," she says, her brows drawing together. She doesn't look upset. More: bewildered. At a loss as to why he would even wonder. She shakes her head. "Not last night, not unless... I really had to."
Lukas"I only asked," Lukas says, stirring a little as she lifts her head, "because I know you work nights."
That's not all, though. There's something else there, something that puts that faint line between his eyebrows, that thoughtfulness in his eyes. It's not necessarily worry. He's just -- thinking. Holding thoughts in his mind, turning them over and over until they're mature enough to be spoken aloud.
"I guess I was just thinking," he says eventually, and quietly, "how we could make this work. And one of the little details is our hours. I'm diurnal. You're nocturnal. It doesn't leave a lot of hours in between, particularly when we're both so busy."
A deeper breath than the last, in, out. His chest rises and falls. His heartbeat is slow and steady, even.
"I want to make this work."
DanickaIt's a wonder that he hasn't got that line permanently between his brows, she thinks, remembering his face as a child. That same consternated frown. That same deep thought, deliberate and heavy. She reaches up, thoughtlessly tracing that line. She leans up, kissing it afterward. She does adore him. And though the words never leave her mouth, and when nothing she does is playful or silly or meant to distract him, that sense is there:
the way she touches his brow is so gentle, so careful, and it is loving. The way she kisses him there afterward is loving, too.
Danicka settles next to him though, waiting. She is more patient now than she used to be. Or at least: she has trained herself to be. In some things. And he does eventually speak, quietly, never having to face her questioning him: what are you thinking? How do you feel? It will take time for him to get there. And she has time. She listens. It makes her a little sad -- for him, really -- when he breathes like that, letting it out slowly, though it doesn't seem like he's bracing himself so much as settling into something new.
She brushes her fingertips across his brow, pushing aside a stray lock of hair. So trimmed, so shorn short. She remembers how long it would get before he'd suffer his mother to cut it, how thick, how curled.
"We just do," she murmurs. Her hand still moves. Her head tips. "And some of it, for me, is a choice. If the time you have is during the day, then I will be with you then."
LukasThere's some tenderness in the way she touches him now. It makes it hard for him to remember what she is, only
that's not true. Always, before, when he thought of werewolves he thought of blood, rage, anger, chaos. He never considered how it might be possible to balance that savagery, that primality, with this sort of unspoken tenderness. But then that was shortsighted of him, and silly. Of course rage exists in balance with closeness, with connection. If she didn't feel so deeply, so instinctually, she would not be able to tap into that rage in the first place.
And then there's the third part of her. The aspect that he almost cannot grasp. Its evidence is there in the windowseat: the little gourds and the knives, the inkbrushes, the physical paraphernalia of a spiritual sacrament he will never, ever be able to quite understand. Not on her level, anyway. Not in this life; not in at least two others.
That part of her is still a mystery, as is so much of her. He knows it's there, but it's an outline.
There's this much now, though. There's tenderness. There's her hand on his brow, pushing aside his hair. There's the way she kisses him, that consternated frown of his, which makes it smooth away. His eyes close. He is nearly two years younger than her, but in some ways he seems older, and always did: always so many things on his worried little mind, always so many things held in balance, held in check.
We just do, she replies. That concept is nearly foreign to Lukas: just letting it be it, and that's how it'll work. He mulls it over, tastes it, as she goes on. And his eyes open again, finding hers.
"You're beautiful in the day," he tells her, simply and plainly. "That's not why I want to be with you, but it's the truth."
DanickaShe would never call him shortsighted or silly. Perhaps worrywart, perhaps overthinker, but not silly. Not shortsighted. She knows what their tribe does to kin. She saw what her mother did to her father. She saw the priced, too, in her mother, of loving someone, something, so much weaker than herself, someone who would never completely understand. There are things in Danicka dark and terrible, glorious to behold, frightening. She has strange memories, and it makes her all the more grateful that he is here now, that he is so warm and real in her arms. She kisses his chest again, closes her eyes and breathes with him.
He is here now. And he is an overthinking worrywart, always so serious, always so driven, and it is grounding. It is real, but not closeminded. It is something to hold onto, and this is why she chose him. When the time came, when the fears from others reached her ears, when she saw what she was becoming, it is one more reason why she thought of him,
then went and found him.
It isn't that Lukas seems older, really, in this life or any others. In some ways it is just that she has no time at all, no youth nor age, simply this... mutability. It's there in how separate she is, even from her own pack. It's there in how she moves without concern for reconciliation between the witch with a knife to the throat of a spirit
and a girl in boxer shorts, cuddled to her new boyfriend in bed,
and all the other people she is, can be, cannot help but be. All these things, old and young, against his steadiness, his steadfastness, his depth of thought and methodology. There are visionary things in his mind -- he could not dig his hands into the bodies of his fellows with any faith that he could change anything if he lacked vision, imagination, openness -- but he is different from her in this. And yet:
she kisses his brow and the frown smooths away. He looks at her, and tells her she's beautiful, and she huffs a breath, a smile breaking over her face, her head turning as though embarrassed by the compliment. She isn't, though. She looks back at him, her eyes quite plainly twinkling at him. She lays her hand on his chest, rests her chin on that hand, looks at him.
"Why do you want to be with me?" she asks him, and in a way, she doesn't ask entirely for her own sake.
LukasNo, she doesn't ask this only for herself. In a way he needs to say this, or at least consider it. He needs to articulate it, if only in the depths of his own mind, before he can move forward. Accept. Let go of fear.
And a look of faint puzzlement crosses Lukas's eyes. That little frown is back again. He touches her face as she had touched his, stroking her cheek, stroking her hair back. He thinks, and he thinks for quite some time, quiet.
"I just ... do," he answers finally. It might seem like a paltry thing to say, a non-answer, but it's not. He elaborates: "There's no rhyme or reason. I just feel it. It feels right. And in spite of all the reasons I have to be wary, something about this feels more ..."
He trails off. He hesitates, thinks, reframes. "It feels more than anything I've ever had before. And it's something I don't want to let go of."
Lukas settles again, that hand going back behind his head, cushioning. His arm is still around her, thoughtless and achingly familiar. A lifetime ago, a dozen lifetimes ago, it was just like this. The memory is etched into his very spirit, even if he doesn't remember himself.
"I want to try," he finishes. "I want to see where this goes."
DanickaThat is, in fact, why she asked. It's enough for her to know that she wants him, to know that this feels right, and to simply accept it, trust it, surrender to it. He is not her, though. That is not enough. She knows he wants her. Wants to spend days in bed with her, fucking her, loving her, finding out the various sounds she makes depending on the depth, the intensity, the emotion of her orgasm. She knows that. Some of that is simply: how could he not want that? Some of that is also: she feels it, when he touches her, when he licks her or caresses her like he's learning something entirely new to him that is, at once, terribly familiar.
She knows he wants to be with her, too. But perhaps most importantly, right now: she understands that he has to know why. He needs to ask himself. He can't just accept it. He can't trust what he doesn't understand.
This. Or her, yet.
They touch each other like the animals they are, soft strokes across the face. She isn't complaining about his breath anymore. And in the end, all he can say is what she's known from the first step she took toward him: a simple yes. A simple I just do. And it bothers him, she can see it in his eyes and hear it in his voice, but it makes him uneasy on some level that he just wants her, wants to be with her, wants to find a way to make this work. Is just, in this life and others: drawn to her.
She kisses his fingers as they pass by her cheek.
What he says could sound flattering to some women. She is not some women. She's not a 'woman' at all, really. She's female, though, intrinsically and deeply. The female of his own species, nipping gently and lovingly at his fingertips as they draw away, grazing her teeth over him as though this somehow cements her affection, somehow translates into her comfort with him. Her eyes come open as his touch leaves her, her gaze finding his face again.
"I think you know," she whispers, and this is true, and it is also aching and perhaps even a little apologetic, but ...eerily precognizant. She does not leave room there for more discussion, for picking that statement apart. It goes dark places, painful places, where there is loss and grief and the utter upending of everything he thought his life was before.
Danicka kisses him right over his heart. "If you get up and shower," she bargains, "I will find you a toothbrush and... order breakfast," she finishes, because the sad truth is: she does not cook. She knows a few things, but overall, it is best if she avoids applying heat to food.
Lukas He does know. And his heart gives a slow, strange squeeze at that. There's sorrow, for the way he thought his life would be. Gone now. Impossible. There is, however, also a strange stirring. It is not eagerness, not quite, but it's something akin to gravity. Like falling. Like slipping into an orbit he's known before, and will know again, and was always meant for.
He knows where this is going. Or rather: he knows where this should go.
A moment later the mood lightens a little. The corner of his mouth moves, a wry and fond little smile. He touches her hair as she kisses his heart. He drops a kiss onto the top of her head, where her hair is fragrant with whatever shampoo he'll find later in her showers.
Along with the little things she's left out on her counter, which will touch him unexpectedly. That she left them out. That she did not hide these small, private pieces of her life. These little markings of who she is, or at least who she looks like when she moves about the world. The birth control pills, which frankly he wasn't sure would even work on Garou. The makeup, which does in fact work on Garou. The little things that make her seem so much like a regular girl, a regular woman, when in fact what she is is not truly wolf and not truly human, but some strange and outworldly fusion of both: a whole that is immeasurably greater than its parts.
That is later, though. For now, he smiles, he kisses her hair. He replies, "Just heat up last night's dinner. I don't mind."
DanickaHer shampoo smells herbal, light, nothing strong or too chemical. She wouldn't be able to stand it. Her soap is simple, soft, the bars full of something silky that lathers well -- as he'll discover. She doesn't use body wash, a poof. There is very little in her shower but a bar of soap, two bottles for her hair, a simple facial wash, some shave lotion, and a razor. She doesn't have a loofah or any exfoliator -- when her skin re-forms every time she shifts, it's hardly necessary.
And then there's everything in her bathroom. He guesses that, well, apparently the birth control pills work on Garou females. He doesn't guess that, well, the spirit of the hormones has to be Awakened to do so, that there is a rather long-running network of female Garou -- primarily Theurges -- who do this work as a matter of course or favor for other females, that it isn't much talked about, that no renown circles because of it, that the male Garou who aren't ignorant of it simply choose to ignore it. These traditions are ancient, have existed long, long before the Pill came into existence. It used to be wild carrot and pennyroyal. It used to be the seeds of unripened papaya slipped regularly, daily, into the food of one's male. It's always been harder to get these things to work for Garou. But not impossible.
A thousand times, Danicka has given the same speech to some younger female bringing her one of those plastic disks full of pills: Gaia is a mother, she says, gathering her tools. Gaia wants babies, wants cubs, and lots of them. All spirits are of Gaia, and so no spirit will protect you one hundred percent. All things on earth are of Gaia, and so no pill will, either. There is always a chance. Life finds a way.
A thousand times. She does not always give it to herself as she takes her pills, as she awakens the new batch from the pharmacy. But it's good to remember.
There is that, in that gravity Lukas feels pulling at him, though it's not something to talk about now. He can get up, he can see those pills, be comforted that this is why she told him not to bother finding a condom, not because she intended to use him to knock herself up on the first go. She's hidden nothing, including her messiness. Not that she knew he was going to come here with her anyway, when she left to meet him at Veselka. She doesn't seem embarrassed or ashamed or apologetic about the mess, either. She just remains snuggled to his side, loathe to let go even if he does stink, even if he does need a shower, even if he did say he's a little hungry and so now she very very very much wants to feed him something, even if she doesn't make it.
Ordering it and buying it and keeping it warm counts.
He smiles. He kisses her hair. She holds him, arms around his middle. "No," she says, decidedly. "I'll order something. Then you can take the pierogis with you to eat later."
She won't be dissuaded. But eventually she is convinced to unwind from him. She lies in bed, watching him get up, naked in her bedroom, in the light. He's not rushing off to go to work, uneasy around her. He looks around. He notices things more than he did before. He goes into her bathroom and sees her things, and she passes by, digging around in the linen closet til she finds a spare and unused toothbrush for him. She looks at him in the shower when he steps in. She watches him for a moment til she finds the blood rushing to her skin.
Roughly ten minutes later her back is against the tile, the water hitting and running down his back, trickling down his flank, hitting her shins, and he is tasting the water as it runs off her flesh. She is holding onto him, her cries echoing off the glass and tile, his cock filling her again, and again, and again.
So they are both wet, then, toweling off. He's brushing his teeth with her toothpaste, with an extra toothbrush that is luckily a different color than hers so when he sets it in the stand and she sees it there she finds herself incredibly delighted. She dresses again in that t-shirt, those boxers, while he pulls on last night's clothes, which he wore so briefly it hardly matters. They don't order breakfast, in the end. They eat cereal. He makes some eggs, because he actually knows how to do these things without charring it all. Danicka curls up on the couch with him after they eat, her head on his lap, his hand in her hair.
They don't talk much. He asks about the things on her windowseat: she tries to explain, at least a little. She asks what he's doing today; he tells her the names of the procedures, then what those names really mean. The clock ticks, too fast, til it's past eleven and, if he wants to make sure he's not late this time,
he has to go.
But oh: it's not that easy. She makes him wait, kissing him, making him promise he won't go yet, while she goes and puts some real clothes on, a fresh suit, nothing more than a red camisole beneath the jacket this time. She wants to walk him to the subway. She makes him take the extra food so he'll have something good to eat at work later. She asks when he'll be done: if she can see him again then.
If he minds if she comes to find him then. If, maybe, he'd like to meet her pack soon. They want to meet him. He remembers: Anezka wants to have dinner, too. But then he has to go, has to go down those concrete steps and she has to let him go.
For now.
