stark daylight.

Lukas

Ultimately, it wasn't as though Lukas expected Danicka to get up out of his bed and leave. Nothing he's seen of her tells him she's anything like that: anything like the type of woman or wolf or whatever who would fuck him and leave him feeling used. It wasn't that he was afraid she would go. It wasn't that at all. It's just that

he wanted her to stay. So much, on a level so primitive he barely understands it.

And she stays. And he is content, and he is exhausted, so sleep comes like a wave swallowing him down. And later when she reorients in bed he's already asleep, he barely stirs except to wrap his arms around her again and mutter. She covers them both with his blanket, wrapping it up around them instead of bothering to get under. It's fine. His heat is on. Besides; they're both warmblooded.

Sleep comes, and the night passes, and all too soon his alarm is blaring. It's seven a.m. Lukas is flinging an arm out to turn the alarm off even before he's fully awake. He smacks the snooze button. The alarm goes quiet. He settles again, and

nine minutes later it repeats, and this time he turns it off, he disentangles himself from his lover.

Danicka. His lover. That's who she is now. Last night was not some fevered imagining after all, because there she is, golden and warm in his bed with its dark, neutral-toned sheets, its thick winter-proof comforters. Wakefulness comes, and with it alertness. He sits up. His body aches faintly. His eyes feel gritty. It's so early. He's so tired, and

she burns in the bed beside him like a flame, devouring all the oxygen in the room.

"I have to go to work," he murmurs. He feels so unsure suddenly. He wanted her so badly last night when she came to his door; it overwhelmed all caution, all logic that told him not to open the door to the wolf. She was barely in and he was on her, he was on her, he started this. She reciprocated. They ate each other up,

and now it's morning and he has a wolf in his bed. He scrubs his face for a moment, looks at her.

"Do you want to stay here?"

Danicka

The blanket that Danicka drew around herself was, in actuality, Lukas's body. Lukas's arm around her. She burns at a temperature so high that she didn't feel a chill, didn't feel the need for a blanket, only

him. Only for him to be close. And stay close.

The truth is that she has, very often, gotten up and walked out immediately after. Used and left. Moved on with her life, some need met, some form of closeness tasted but not devoured. Usually they are not terribly sad to see her go. She's hot, she's great in bed, but she's so intense. They see nothing else happening with her. They're not sure they should have let her into their homes. They aren't worried when they don't hear from her again.

The heat is on; they are warmblooded. She sleeps in bare skin, under nothing, and unless Lukas draws that blanket or those sheets up, they sleep atop his bedclothes with their skins exposed to the warmed air, legs and arms and bodies wrapped together.

At 7 am, his arm flings out to hit the snooze button just as his alarm clock gets smacked clear off the nightstand, thumping to the floor and going silent. Danicka turns her face into his pillow and rubs it there, tucking her arm back in close to her body, her eyes not even opening.

Her presence does indeed burn -- bright enough to hurt to look at, hot enough to sear. Her hair is spread all over his pillow, her body tangled with his, those deceptively slender limbs of hers limp with comfort and warmth. For an Adren, it is shocking how scarless she is. It says something about her, but damned if he can decipher what that is. It says something about him that he remembers last night the way he does: remembers reaching for her, kissing her, remembers that 'he started this' and 'she reciprocated' when it wasn't like that at all, it isn't quite the truth.

But this is the truth, here and now and untouched by memory or the addles of sleep: now it's morning and he has a wolf in his bed.

His alarm clock gets knocked to the floor at 7 am, and nine minutes later, the damn thing goes off again, but now it's on the floor and out of immediate reach. He gets up, he turns the damn thing off, he's standing there or coming back to his bed and sees

that Danicka has opened her eyes, pale green in the daylight but not quite blue. She's watching him now, a small half-smile on her face. A small, almost sad half-smile.

"Mmm," she hums, which is just the sound of her thinking. She shakes her head a bit. "No. I'd get bored." She exhales slowly, moving closer to him, that smile going a little lopsided, crooked and wicked and not at all the behavior of an Alpha or a Crescent Consular or any of that. "You should stay," she murmurs. "You're sick. I could feel it last night. You have a fever. You're dizzy. You can't possibly go in."

Lukas

It's tiny. It's subtle. But it's there, and it stings:

when she moves closer, he recoils. He doesn't even quite move away. It's just a tiny little movement, a drawing-in so that his elbows are closer to his sides, his knees closer to his chest. It's not disgust; nothing of the sort. But it's something a little like fear. Not quite, but close. Something a little like self-protection, hiding the soft underbelly.

I could feel it last night, she says. He remembers it as vividly as a flashburn. Her legs wrapping around him. Her body taking his in. He feels arousal stirring in him, fierce as any wolf. He still wants her; he still remembers what that body of hers looked like when he finally, finally undid that button, but

now she's warm in his bed, she looks comfortable there, like she wants to belong there. Like she does belong there. And the ground beneath him crumbles away. It is fear after all. It's terror.

"I can't," he says, low. And he unfolds, getting up from the bed, his back turned to her, that broad sweep from shoulders to hip. Completely bare, he starts looking for his clothes; something to put on. "I have a surgery at eight... another right after... " it's half-mumbled. Excuses. He takes a breath and he turns to face her.

"Listen. I'm not -- that wasn't a one night stand. I didn't use you. But I can't stay. Okay?"

Danicka

It's tiny, and it's subtle, but it's there.

He recoils. Her words stop there, halting when she tells him she could feel it last night. She's making an allusion there, the heat of his skin and her skin together, so hot it was feverish. So maddening, so wanting, that it made her lightheaded. That it made him dizzy. When he draws in on himself like that, a useless instinct if ever there was one, because he could not be more vulnerable to her than he is right now, it does sting her.

Worse, though, is the flicker of disgust she feels when she sees terror in his eyes and she does not understand it other than that it has something to do with her. Having her here in his bed, pulling away when she wants to touch him, invite him to stay, lure him into lingering -- it scares him. And for a sharp, hot moment, she despises him.

How dare you is what she wants to ask him. But she can hear the words in her head and they don't quite make sense. Nothing he's doing is wrong or out of order. She came to his apartment at three in the fucking morning when he had to work at eight the next day. She slept in his bed without asking or being invited to stay there. He has to work. She knew he had to work. Nothing about this is terribly hurtful or strange.

Except that it is. Except that he looks at her like a stranger, when last night the way they were together was anything but. He looks at her like a monster when last night he looked at her like he couldn't bear not to be in her, moving in her. He looks at her and he wants her, and he's scared of her, and she is hurt and she also hates him and none of it, none of it quite makes sense to her.

Lukas can surely feel that white-hot flash of rage against his back when he turns it to her. It would seem like defiance if she thought he were thinking about that right now. A part of her wants to make sure he never does that again, never dares turn his back to her like this again. She doesn't want to back down, bite her tongue, accept. He is her kin. At the very least he can show her respect.

Danicka turns her face away, tamping down on that rage, on all those conflicting feelings that boil inside of her -- yes, including lust, looking at him naked in the daylight for the first time. When he turns to face her, she's looking at the end of his bed, but her eyes aren't seeing the end of his bed.

Listen he says, and very slowly she turns her head to look at him. Her eyes are darker than they were when she first opened them today. Her eyebrow flicks. "Why would you going to work suggest that you 'used' me?" she says, and there's a mockery in the undertone of her words that is as smooth as polished marble -- no warmth or softness to it at all. The words themselves almost sound like a challenge. And in a way, they are, throwing those words, that implication, back in his teeth.

She slips her legs from his covers, moving her feet to the ground. She begins reaching for her discarded clothes: panties, slacks, jacket.

Lukas

Of course he feels that flash of rage against his back, like the first sear of a detonation. He tenses, expecting the shockwave, expecting a blow, but

it never comes. So he turns to face her. She's not looking at him. He says what he does; it feels inadequate. She says what she does, and it feels so cold, like all at once what warmth there was or might have been is gone. He is reminded of how she looked in the street, warning him to respect her. Anger covers the ache.

"I just didn't want you to feel like I'd gotten what I wanted, and now I was getting out. It's not like that." He bends to help her: he picks up her slacks and holds it out to her. It's not much of a peace offering. "I just ... need some time to think."

Danicka

Anger covers the ache.

Most human beings use anger as a defense mechanism. An escalated outlet of frustration. A way to turn fear into something useful. A protection against hurt.

Monsters use it, too.

Doesn't he understand? Doesn't he know what last night was? Didn't he feel it? Danicka hears him, and she resists the urge to yank her slacks out of his hand and snap at him not to fucking help her, she can do it. She's being childish and she knows it. Her heart feels crushed and she can't explain why. She doesn't trust anything he says right now; she moved closer to him and there was nothing there. Nothing but a bit of lust, a lot of fear. Nothing else.

If she thinks about it too much she'll howl. Step through the crack between the worlds, take a new form, turn into a ghost, and howl.

So Danicka draws on her slacks. She'll bother finding her underwear in a second. She puts them on, and she rises to her feet, buttoning them, drawing up the zipper, putting the metal tabs back in their flat hooks. She makes herself go slowly. The motions are smooth, methodical, familiar. She makes a point not to rush out of his bed, or rush to get dressed. She moves at what feels like a snail's pace, compared to how her heart is beating.

"I never would have thought that," she says, her voice calm, though not really any warmer or softer, "until you brought it up."

She has found, and shoulders into, her jacket. Buttons that single button over her middle.

Lukas

She could have snapped her slacks out of his hands. She doesn't. She is smooth, methodical, calm, and all the same her anger is snapping in the air like a flag. Her hurt, too, beneath that,

and of course he feels it. He felt it last night and he feels it now; felt what she felt, feels what she feels. It's like they're linked in some inexorable way. Something he doesn't understand, doesn't trust, fears, but cannot deny. He was angry to find her in his family's home - but he followed her anyway. He was puzzled by her the night he met her, and then alarmed when he understood what she was - but he wanted her anyway when she came close enough that he could smell her. Taste her rage like heat in the air.

She buttons that button. He watches. Then those clear eyes come to her face. Strange that she's so much stronger than he is, and yet she's the one to put all her armor on first. He's still naked in so many ways. He doesn't move to cover himself.

"I'm sorry," he says. "Can we talk later?"

Danicka

Her hair is falling across her cheek. It's tousled, and she looks like she just rolled out of bed because she did, only

it was his bed she rolled out of this morning. His bed, where she slept all night with her feet tucked under his shins and his arm wrapped around her like a blanket and their bodies aligned like they were meant to fit like that. Just like that. Til he fell asleep with her, which happened very quickly after he came inside of her, his hand was held in such a way against her chest that her pulse beat against the inside of his wrist, thumping in time with his own.

She tosses it back as she lifts her head. She's dressed. Well, mostly. Her panties are somewhere tangled in his blankets, and she's not going to bother to look for them right now. She's barefoot. She looks at him and he hasn't moved. He's still naked.

He says what he says, and for a moment she just watches him, motionless and silent. She's no longer lashing with anger, but that makes it that much harder for her to stay where she is, in this room where it smells like them, smells like sex, where she can smell him and smell herself all over him like he's hers, like he belongs to her.

No: like he chose her.

Danicka gives a single flick of a nod. "Yes," she says. "Just let me know when you're done with work."

Lukas

There are so many things left unspoken between them that the air is thick with it. The silence is painful; oppressive. He should get dressed. He wants, suddenly - perversely, now that he's ruined it - to go to her. Put his arms around her. Pull her against his body, because

he smells like her, she smells like him, they smell like they belong together, and like he'd chosen her last night.

He doesn't go to her. He nods: "I'll be off around seven." Pause. "Just come to the hospital. We'll go somewhere and talk."

Danicka

Danicka nods again, and it's that simple. He doesn't go to her. She runs her fingers through her hair. "All right," she says, and perhaps one of the worst things about this now is that she can't go over to him, either. Touch him again. Kiss him before he goes off to work.

It wasn't a one night stand, he says, but the way they're acting now feels like it. She moves for the door. "I'll let you get ready," she says, and closes it behind her when she steps through.

She isn't in his living room when he comes out. Her shoes aren't in his entryway. His door is locked.

Lukas

She moves for the door, but he moves too. He intercepts her, knowing full well that this is a bad idea, knowing that you never ever get between a wolf and her way out; you never ever corner her like that.

He does it anyway. He catches her hand as she's walking, or he tries: she could so easily elude him if she wanted to. She could disappear into another world if she wanted to. She could tear his arm off at the shoulder for trying to touch her right now.

He does it. Anyway.

And then - he doesn't seem to have anything to do. Or say. He just holds her hand a moment; holds her in place. Looks at her with his brow furrowed, his eyes full of indecision and ache and conflict. After a moment his chest rises on a breath, falls. He lets her go.

Danicka

You never get between a wild animal in flight and its way out. Preferably, you never send the wild animal into flight unless you're trying to scare it off. But keep it content, keep it happy, get it tamed? You let it run when it's spooked.

Lukas gets up, and she hears and feels him do so, is turning to him when he comes over to her. He catches her hand, and she doesn't twist his arm into her grip, yank it behind his back, snap it at the shoulder. Even if she were an Ahroun, she wouldn't do this. Even if she really did hate him, she wouldn't do this. But she lets him keep her hand in his, and that is quite a long way from hating him.

He just looks at her. And she looks at him, her own brow furrowing.

"What?" she asks, and it's intense, it's forceful, but strangely quiet as it leaves her mouth.

Lukas

"I just..."

And by then he's already let her go. Not because he fears for his safety or the wellbeing of his arm. He's never, not once, really felt like she would hurt him. Not deliberately. She's not like that, and he trusts this even when he trusts nothing else.

"I didn't want you to walk out like that," he finishes. This is as inadequate as anything he's said. He could say more, of course. He could say how he feels like he's ruined something, and even if he wasn't sure he wanted that something to begin with it hurts to have spoiled it. He could say how he felt like if she walked out now, she'd be a different person by seven pm. She'd have her walls up. So would he.

He doesn't say any of that. He says: "I didn't want to lose you."

Danicka

There is a lot she could say to that. And the clock is ticking, his time for showering, dressing, feeding his cat, grabbing a bagel and rushing out the door to go cut someone open when he's hardly slept is quickly dwindling. But Danicka doesn't really answer him. Her brow is still wrinkled, her expression searching.

"Why did you pull away?" she asks him.

Lukas

"I don't know." He grimaces to hear himself say it: inadequate, again. So he tries harder. He thinks, looking away from her, frowning at the floor, at the oblique slant of light through his south-facing windows.

"Last night," he says quietly, "I didn't have to think about anything outside of the moment. You came. I wanted. That was enough. But now I have to consider everything else. I have to think about what it means to wake up next to you. Not just for myself, not just right now, but for my whole family, and for what could be a very long time.

"I know ... in the end it might not even be up to me. But I never planned for any of this. I need time," he comes back to this, finally, and a little desperately, as if it's the only way he can say it. "I need to think, and I can't think when you touch me."

Danicka

Now they aren't touching at all. And he's completely naked, standing in front of her like that and she is keeping her eyes on his eyes, her hands to herself. What he says doesn't smooth her brow or calm her features. Truth be told, what he says makes her glad she's clothed, makes her glad she's on her way out, makes her glad she has some guard up now, some defense.

There are a lot of things she wants to say to him, but they are punishing things, and will get her nothing. They don't help. She looks away and exhales, her shoulders squared, then turns her eyes back to him.

"While you are my kin, you will never be mated without your consent," she says, and even the formality of this may be hurtful despite the sheer gravity of the promise. This is written in a letter to Anezka that was waiting for her on her doorstep. This is, in a different form, promised to his parents as well: they will never be taken from each other while they are hers to ward, no matter what use it would be to the tribe. She says this quietly, she writes it rather than sending it through spirits, because the truth is that this promise is incredibly subversive of her. She would not be able to excuse it, explain it, if Garou outside of her own pack found out.

"You enthusiastic consent," she amends, which is actually quite a different thing. Not just resignation. Not just duty. She doesn't promise that they may mate whomever they choose, that she will not intervene at all in these matters, doesn't promise that she will give them the choice to have whatever they want, but: she will not force them into matehood.

Not even him. Not even when she wants him for herself.

"Last night," Danicka goes on, and her voice is even quieter, but it's less formal, it's more her now, "I thought you let me in, and let me in your bed, because you were... choosing me. But you weren't even thinking," she says, and the words barely make it out of her alive. The breath she lets out at the very end of the words themselves is like the aftermath of being struck, being punched in one of the soft spots between your lungs and the world.

So there's a pause after that. She regains some of that breath, some of that composure.

"Take the time you need," she says. "And just call me when you're ready." A beat; she realizes something: "I'll leave you my number so you can."

Lukas

Surely it means something that he aches so intensely, to hear her speak like that. Surely it means something that he wants to turn away in shame when she lays it out for him: I thought you chose me. But you weren't even thinking. It wasn't like that, he wants to say. It wasn't so cheap, so tawdry. It wasn't a one night stand he regrets. He's not pushing her away because he feels he's made a mistake, but because --

he can barely quantify the why, even for himself. It has something to do with the way he saw his own life, the lines he drew for himself. It has something to do with how very much he needs to feel that as insignificant as he really is, as little as his life and contributions will matter in the terrible grand scheme of things, some part of his life was lived as his own. And beyond all that, it has something to do with fear. Not of her, but for her.

She is not one of the warlike auspices. She is not, from what he's seen, one of those wolves who will climb so ruthlessly to the top that enemies will hound her every step. Even so. He knows what werewolves are. He knows how so many of them end, and

it's all so much. His mind reels from it all, runs. He just needs time. He needs to think. He can't think when he can see the color of her eyes.

"Okay," he says; very quiet. "Thank you, Danicka."

Danicka

It's easy enough to forget, caught up in the moment and his own thoughts and what this all means, or could mean,

that Danicka as good as told him she's been in love with him since she was ten. In love with him, the idea of him, the memory of having a friend who wasn't scared of her all the time, who reacted to being hurt by pushing past it and getting stronger, who was bright and stubborn and not mean, not really, but not weak. All she's ever wanted -- and not just from him, but from Gaia, from life itself -- is a chance.

Then he welcomed her into his den, smiling, and he took her in his arms when she kissed him and he kissed her back so hard. Then he took her to his bed, he laughed with her and undressed her, turned her under him, made her his, and he doesn't really know her at all but for awhile

it felt like he did. And it felt good to be known.

It isn't that she thinks it was a one night stand. He's already told her he wants to just get to know her, see this thing through, because he is drawn to her. She doesn't think it cheap or empty. But she is confused. She is having trouble understanding why he's pulling back from it, why he would pull back from something that feels right.

Unless it doesn't feel right to him. Unless last night was, in the end, what he said: she came. He wanted. And that was enough... but only then, in that moment. Now it's not enough anymore. That's what she has trouble understanding, and what she has trouble accepting.

She can only nod to that. "Bye, Lukas," which is a triumph. She does leave this time, though she doesn't close his bedroom door. He doesn't hear her leave, but his ears pop suddenly, tingling as though they've heard something just below the boundary of their usual range. Later, while he's washing himself up for work, he gets a text message from an unknown number. All it says is:

this is me.