An Imp-Sized Migraine

Log Info

• Title: An Imp-Sized Migraine

• Emitter: Andelena

• Characters: Andelena, Dolan

• Place: Andelena and Dolan's apartment

• Summary: Andelena's attempting to clean the apartment when Dolan comes home from investigating a supposed haunting wearing an eyepatch instead of his artificial eye. Turns out he has one incredible headache from using Daeus's gifts to detect enemies, so Andelena starts caring for him. Eventually, she helps him into the bedroom, where it's nice and dark--the perfect environment for migraine recovery.

It's the evening, and Andelena's foregoing her usual second-favorite activity to do in the evening to attempt to do something nice for Brydion. Namely, she's sweeping around the apartment, cleaning up in that way that Andelena can manage without absolutely botching it. After all, sweeping is simple stuff. Anyone can do it.

"Hope he likes it," Andelena comments to herself as she inspects her handiwork thus far, pleased that dirt and other things are... now all collected in one corner. At least it's not on the floor, and she'll get the pile of filth into the trash easily enough once she's actually done. "What d'ya think, Deliverance?"

The sword hangs up from its usual place on the wall. It doesn't respond. Andelena huffs a little. "Sure, I go and I ask you if you think I'm doing a good job and you say nothing, but as soon as I say the word 'fuck'--"

The sword buzzes in place on the wall, and Andelena snorts. "Yup. You really are like my mother. Daeus's light on the back of a bull's balls, what a fucking weird sword."

• CLUMP CLANK CLUMP CLANK* up the stairs outside. There's Dolan, and seemingly in no particular hurry. Yes, he always makes that much noise when he is wearing armor. The stairs aren't the best. Nothing sounds like it's horribly wrong, though.

"Sounds like it's him," Andelena murmurs to herself. It's an unfortunate habit she's developed since Deliverance became, well, Deliverance and not just a sword--she carries on these little one-sided observations like she expects the sword to actually talk back to her. Thankfully, no one's about to ask a six-foot-tall woman with a sword why she's murmuring to it. She puts down a dustpan and collects the small pile of filth before she chucks it into their trash bin.

The broom gets put into a corner and Andelena goes to open the front door before Dolan can beat her to it. "Hey hot stuff," she greets him before she can even see him.

It sure is Dolan, although with one startling-at-first difference. The golden gem that replaces his eye is nowhere to be seen, replaced instead by the eyepatch he wears when he's not wearing it. Outside of that, all appears entirely normal. "Hey, beautiful." A note of satisfaction on many levels lingers in those words, but he grabs the doorframe before stepping inside and reaching for her. "Problem solved."

She wraps her arms around him and leans in for the kiss on the lips, and once the kiss is done, she pulls back a little and asks, "Something go wrong with the gem eye? You usually don't wear that eyepatch when you leave the house." There's that tone of concern in her voice and in her expression as she looks at all of his face.

Now that she looks more closely, something does look off. A pinched look says my head is pounding to someone who knows him as well as Andie does. "Yeah." When he's done with the kiss on the lips, he rubs the heel of his hand into his remaining eye. "You ever ask the Knight to show you evil, and what he shows you is strong enough to fucking blind you for a minute?" He shakes his head, reaching back to close the door behind him. He's not looking around him, either.

Andelena makes a noise like a 'tsk', followed by a sigh. "Yeah, sometimes you end up with something like a little light show run by a bunch of horny teenagers trying to impress their girlfriends," she says, followed up closely by her carefully maneuvering him so that he can lean into her as she leads him into the apartment.

"Just relax, Bry," she says. "I'll get you onto the couch, and then I'll go shut all the curtains to make it nice and dark in here. I tried to clean up a little. Know I'm not as good at it as you are, but doesn't make sense for you to do all the domestic shit around here." At least Andelena's self-aware on that failing.

"It made the eye go wild," Dolan complains, wrapping an arm around her waist and leaning into her. "Kept showing lights and old images, and wouldn't show the same thing my other eye was seeing at all. It was worse than being blind." Reconciling that is a fast way to a severe headache, yes, and add in the magic for a fun time!

Now that the door is closed, he does relax and let her steer him. "Yeah? Thank you, Andie. We got the little fucker." He'd been called out to help deal with a haunting in the noble district, but it looks like he has already discarded the mantle and trappings before coming home.

"Sounds like a damned nightmare. What the fuck is going on with that place anyway? Seems like half the shit that's been popping up lately is with all the hoity-toity people up there," Andelena comments as she leads Dolan carefully over to the couch. "First it was the totenmaskes, and then the haunting... Better you than me going up there, though, because I probably couldn't stand to be around those pompous fucks longer than I gotta."

Once she gets him safely situated onto the couch, she goes over to the curtains in the apartment and closes them, shutting out the light. "I'm glad you got him, though. What was causing it?" she asks, heading into what passes for a kitchen in the apartment to go shuffling through the cabinet. Eventually, she finds some peppermint tea, which is usually Andelena's preferred method for soothing a headache. Once she also manages to unearth their tea kettle, she gets to work brewing the tea.

Once seated on the couch, Dolan does not lie down immediately, but instead sets to work on the buckles that hold his armor on. "Damned if I know," he answers, closing his other eye as well and seeming to prefer instead to do it by feel. "What I do know is that a little imp was controlling a banshee to harass that poor family. The father opened the door after I warned him not to and almost ended up in the halls. I found the bastard imp controlling it and sent it back to Maugrim just in time." A shake of the head as the buckles begin to come loose one by one. "Gave a name, though. Jag'oroth? Sounded like that imp was working for him."

Andelena waits in the kitchen, leaning up against the counter as she listens to Dolan tell the story. "I definitely don't recognize that name," she says. "Sure sounds like the name of a real piece of shit if it's a fiend, which it almost certainly is if it had an imp working for it."

She takes a moment to glare at the tea kettle, as though staring at it harder will make it ready to go faster. "Probably worth following up on it with connections," she comments idly. "Can probably get some information about it somewhere. Could be important later on down the line."

Dolan chuckles wickedly. "Yeah, for sure if it pulled something like that on that poor family, and had an imp working for it, it's a fiend. Doubt that's its real name, but I'll check it out. The imp said that Jag'oroth sends his regards to the household." A cheeky grin, even as his fingers continue to work the buckles blind. Closing his eyes seems to help the headache, if the pinched look is any judge. "I told it that the Knight sends His regards in return and ran it through."

The kettle finally sings its song, and Andelena gets to work. The tea is steeping and will be ready in a few short minutes. If there is one thing that Andelena knows how to do from her noble upbringing, it's tea, even if she's not much for the stuff.

She snickers and grins at Dolan's last remark. "Nice," she says. "Wish I'd been there to see its face. You want me to add some honey to the tea or nah?"

The whistle of the kettle is enough to make Dolan wince, but finally the last of the buckles come free, and he hoists the armor off over his head to join the weapon harness that he'd set aside before sitting down. Neither is where they belong, which is a testament to where he's at right now. Once he has pulled the gambeson off over his head and tossed it in the direction of the pile, he drops his head into his hands, driving the heels into his eyesockets - carefully in the case of the right one. "Yeah, please. I didn't see its face either, it was invisible, but its dumb ass tried to fly up the chimney and slammed its head into the grate, which told me where it was."

"If only all the bad guys were incompetent," Andelena says with a wistful sigh. She mixes some honey into the cup she's chosen for Dolan and walks over to him. "Hold out your hand and I'll put the cup in it when you're ready, and I'll tidy up that pile. You don't gotta move a muscle." She's warm and affectionate as she smiles at him--not that he's willing to open his eyes at the moment, but it carries through in her voice just fine.

A quiet snort is all the laughter Dolan affords right now, and at length he holds his right hand out for the cup. "Thanks, baby." The affection is returned. "Sorry I'm not going to be any fun tonight."

Andelena snorts as she puts the cup carefully into Dolan's hand, not letting go until his grip is secure on the cup. "Hun, you're easily the sexiest thing on the surface of this entire planet," she says, "but I can hold off for a night, and you know I prefer to take care of you when I can. Gotta make sure my man's put back together successfully."

A snort is Dolan's only immediate response. He takes the teacup, fingers curling around it, and sips from it without moving his other hand more than he has to. "He's having more wear and tear than usual." Siiiip. "I don't know why you put up with me."

Andelena gets to tidying up the equipment, putting it away in the proper places. She snorts as she picks up his gambeson and folds it neatly in her arms. "Because I love you--because you were the first guy I ever met who didn't treat me like a threat to his existence nor a potential 'good second or third wife' and stepmother for his brats. You're an honest man. A good man. You know how fuckin' rare those are?"

She smiles fondly as she goes to hang his gambeson up. "It's why I said yes to marrying you a second time around. You're one hell of a man, Brydion Donnely."

What is there to be said to that? Dolan just sits there, tea in hand, letting the words sink into him like a benison. "Good, because there isn't another woman I'd rather have by my side, even when my head's pounding." For all the light words, the tone speaks of real gratitude - and a certain level of distraction. "What happened while I was out?"

Andelena finishes with her self-assigned task and walks back to the couch, sitting down next to him. Her voice drops to a gentler volume. "Honestly, not much," she says. "I swept up the place. Quiet fuckin' day off. Too quiet. I'm really missing being in the action. I don't mind guard duty, especially if it means I'm protecting the refugees from shitheads who wanna steal from them, but... You know how it is."

She puts a hand on his shoulder. "I just wanna make sure you're okay. That you come home and you're happy when you are home. I know I may not be some little domestic housewife--I mean, shit, I can't even pack our fucking bags right--but I'm trying, Bry."

"I know, baby. Stuff like that - that is all learn by doing." DOlan still doesn't move his hand, using the other to hold his tea. He seems to have a definite preference for not seeing anything just at the moment. "That's okay. Take a couple of jobs from the Guild. You've got some catching up to do when it comes to weird stuff."

"Yeah I do," Andelena says with a snicker. "I gotta find something we can joke about again, at least, besides bacon grease. That one's been topped, but you can't joke about totenmaskes. Not after seeing what they did to those poor people."

She sighs a little and just rubs Dolan's shoulder a little. "Y'want a massage in a bit? Or I could go pick up dinner someplace. Fuck, I'd be happy to do both. Whatever you want, Bry."

Again, that quiet snort, and Dolan slowly, slowly sips his tea. Very slowly and carefully, and still keeping his eye covered. "Don't think I want to eat just now," he answers after a minute or so of pondering. "I'll be okay if you want to, in here. The less I look at right now, the better."

"Honestly, I wasn't hungry yet," Andelena replies. "Just figured you might be. Worst comes to shove, if we're both starving later, I could get you some soup and put it in a cup. Don't gotta look to eat soup, thank the Knight for that."

She gets up from the couch. "I'll start making the bed in case you just wanna lie down--unless you feel like going there already. Probably not a bad idea. Sooner you sleep it off, the better, I think."

Dolan doesn't respond at once, instead taking a longer sip of his now-cooling tea. "Let's get something later." Definitely sounds like he just wants to lie down in the dark. These types of headaches are not fun, and the eye behaving like it did can't be helpful. "Need a hand?"

Andelena smirks as she gets up from the couch. "Could use it," she says slyly, "if only because I never object to your hands on me, anyway. C'mon, big boy."

She takes his free arm (and his tea, to keep it from being spilled) and helps him up, walking with him to the bedroom. Careful steps, slow steps, will take them to the safety of bed--and most importantly, the darkness and the peace and quiet that follows.