Daeus's Work for Dolan
Log Info
- Title: Daeus's Work for Dolan
- Emitter: Dolan
- Place: Andelena and Dolan's house
It's just past three bells in the middle of the night when there's a quiet click from the front door, a second click, and then a padding of that wants to be quiet but isn't completely. Dolan, by this time in the night, is absolutely exhausted and aching, the chill of a fall overnight having seeped into his bones. Being alone and making his way back has given him plenty of time to think about the events of the previous hours - probably too much time to think.
At least the walk allows him to stretch out some?
There's a lovely sight waiting for Dolan. Or, well, there's a sight that's lovely for a man who loves his wife very much, including when she's stolen his tunic and breeches (or at least, they were his when he first bought them) and is half-asleep on the couch in a configuration of spread limbs that's somewhere between scandalous and uncomfortable. This is because she had to account for the two calico-colored mounds of fur that had settled on the couch at some point during the evening, and if one wants the kitty snuggles, one has to pay... the kitty contortionist fee.
The things Andelena does for love.
"Huhwhu--" comes the very graceful greeting of Andelena, but that's interrupted by the very sudden padding of calico cats on the floor, as they have deployed from their agreed-upon feline resting spots and charge across the house to the front door, meowing and purring like they have never been fed. Andelena smirks when she sees it's Dolan at the door. "There you are, baby," she says affectionately. "I think I was passed out--or almost..."
She manages to rise up and get upright enough to stretch out her limbs (in a very dignified manner, complete with yawn) and approach Dolan. "Ffffffuck me, that couch is a trap," she says. "I got your message at the Temple. Given you're back so late, I take it there was more going on than just trapeze artists and clown... fuckery." Very eloquent, barely-awake-Andie.
Oh no. She waited up. Dolan stops short, and leans against the wall, closing his flesh and blood eye and reaching to take the artificial one out. "Hi baby," he greets, not moving toward her at all. "Sorry it's so damned late. The Sunlord sent me for a reason. Bastards were summoning devils to eat a wayward ex-member." He grits his teeth. "The whole damned tent was a - summoning circle."
"The whole damned tent was a fucking what?" Andelena says, now very firmly awake. "Gods, Bry. No fucking wonder you went. I ain't mad at all, just... Wow. Holy shit."
She approaches him and holds her hand out for the eye. "I can take care of that if you'd like me to, babe, then I'll help you into the armory. Anyone tend to you before you got back home?" Then she glances a little stink-eye down to the calico cats staring hungrily at them. "Maybe I ought to distract the girls with some fish flakes first or something, though, or they'll try and follow us into the armory like they think there'll be a grand fuckin' feast of fish in there."
"Only went because the Knight more or less told me to, baby." Dolan hands off the artificial eye and straightens up with an effort. "I ain't hurt, baby. Just tired." And hurting, from the look of it. "He had a damn good reason for it. They were summoning something - big. Something that wanted a human sacrifice to manifest. We managed to stop it, just a few chain devils in the summoning group to send back. Rune and Harkashan were there, thank the Knight, and so was Aya and her man."
While he talks, he loosens the harness holding the greatsword and lets it drop to the floor, then grabs it in his good hand. "Makes me think, baby. Don't s'pose He's ready for me to call it a career just yet, yeah?"
"Sure doesn't sound like He's intending for you to call it quits yet, yeah," Andelena replies with more than a little emphasis on the Sunlord's reference. She looks thoughtful as she goes and distracts the girls with severel jingling bell-toys she'd found in the market, turning her attentions back to her husband. "Chain devils, want of a human sacrifice..."
She looks up at Dolan, motioning for him to follow her to the armory now that the girls are distracted by jingle-jingle-jingle. "This sounds like something we ought to be putting our noses into together," she says. "Like before. That's shit on a colossal scale that I certainly can't fucking ignore. Who were they aiming for sacrificing? Their ex-member?"
"Yeah, but the ringleader tried to sacrifice himself, too." Dolan forces himself, greatsword in hand, to follow her to the armory. "All that's left is to make sure that whole troupe gets thrown under the jail cells," he growls. "If I ain't been there, that whole audience would probably be dead."
He is not attentive to detail, stowing the greatsword and its harness in the first available location that will hold it. "You want to help me make sure they get dragged before the magistrate?"
The armory door shut behind them, Andelena helps out with getting her man undone and the kit removed. "You did the Knight's work," she says in a quiet sort of awe. "You saved... How many people were in that tent? Probably hundreds? That's a fucking sign, all right. Knight's not done. You're needed."
She smiles brightly at him. "We're needed. Yeah. I'll gladly help them get dragged before the magistrate. Fuckers trying to turn something like that into the colossal fucking nightmare that it became? They deserve to see the Knight's Justice. And you aren't doing it alone. But for right now? I'm running you a bath once we're done in here."
A quiet sort of warm, peaceful smile tugs at the mobile half of Dolan's features. "S'pose I'll be at this for a while, yet. Truly, baby, He blessed us all tonight. Hope that makes up for the hour." His half-a-grin is semi-cheeky, semi-tired as he works himself slowly out of his gear, including cloaks, jacket, brace, and then the armor. The longsword comes out as well.
"So long as I've got you to keep me going, yeah?"
"Behind you all the damned way, baby," Andelena smiles brightly as she helps put away the cloaks and everything else in its proper place. "And you know I won't bitch about the hour. You were doing the Knight's work. Yeah, I waited up for you, but only because I wanted to make sure I was there for you if you came home bleeding like a stuck pig." She's picked up a couple of his metaphors here and there, clearly.
She takes the longsword and sets it lovingly into its proper place--which, of course, prompts Deliverance to chime in from her spot on the wall. "I had a feeling it wouldn't be forever," the older woman's voice says affectionately. "Brydion is, after all, a model servant of the Sunlord."
"Livvie, you're a sword; you can't fuck my husband," Andelena quips back at the sword with a wicked grin, prompting a sigh from the longsword.
Dolan's half-a-grin turns into a wearily affectionate smile. "Still wish you'd been able to come with me." He's not making any particular effort to put things away, only wriggling out of everything but shirt and trousers, including boots. The pack got dropped somewhere on the floor.
"Nah, I can handle chain devils." A shudder abruptly ripples through him, but then Livvie chimes in, and he chuckles. "Oh, I'll have to stop eventually. Just - maybe not yet."
"Believe me, babe, I didn't want to fill in, but apparently the Sunlord wanted me one place and wanted you in another," Andelena says with a little grin. "Maybe just to communicate clearly to you that He needs you out there. You know, so you don't go, 'Me? What about this other fucker over here?'"
She helps out with the putting things away part of this whole endeavor, but she knows she's not the tidying and packing expert that her husband is. One day she'll have it mastered. Maybe sometime between now and when their children are born--at which point, it won't help much, because children are miniature cyclones that will destroy a room in a given span of time.
"We'll have to stop eventually," Andelena agrees. "Don't forget, that's we. We're having a bundle of bouncing babies. As many as Althea will give us. Or as many as I can manage before I call it quits."
Once everything is off except shirt and trousers, and his light armor is laid aside, his hand goes automatically towards his shoulder, and he grits his teeth. "Fuck. Guess I owe Him that," he agrees, rubbing at the joint carefully, firmly, and slowly, it shifting in his hand and back as he rubs.
Still, there's a small smile on his life. "I still want to see our kids, baby. But - doesn't look like we're having any just that. As long as you're okay with that."
"I waited how long for kids?" Andelena says with a grin. "I can wait a little more. Just means I gotta pray a little harder to Althea when the time comes around. Maybe Tarien'll have a laugh and we end up with triplets on the first go around."
"Mmm. I vaguely recall it being mentioned somewhere in your family tree that twins occasionally occur?" Deliverance asks.
That gets a steel-gray blink from Andelena as she looks at Deliverance. "What--wait. Yeah, I think my grandfather on dad's side was part of a pair of twins? I never met him. I think he got a sword to the gut in a jousting tournament." She snorts. "Probably the way my dad'll go out, honestly. Noble knight shit and all that."
She looks at Dolan and says, "Baby, I'm so fucking glad we don't live in that world. I'll take this life we've got now over that dressed-up sack of pig shit any day. You, me, and the Knight--and Livvie too, I guess." A wide grin spreads across her face.
That, despite his clear aching, brings one of those soft half-smile quirks to Dolan's harlequin, scarred features. "I don't mind, baby. She keeps you safe when I can't, so more power to her." He straightens up from where he'd been leaning against a shelf, still rubbing gingerly. "You, me, and the Knight, and doesn't sound like any of us are going anywhere, yeah?"
A deep warmth floods him at the notion.
"Not going anywhere but where the Knight needs us to go, baby," Andelena replies, wandering up to him and giving him a much-overdue peck on the lips. "Now, let's not get handsy in here; rules are rules. I got a bath to go run and you got a bath to go lie in for those muscles of yours, babe."
She opens up the armory door, half-expecting to see calico cats swarming the gates like the angry, furry horde... But no. They're distracted with toys that jingle. Lazily batting them around. Spot looks like she's eyeing her older 'sister' instead as a toy. The joy of young cats. "Looks like we're all clear for a bath, too," she informs Dolan with a grin. "No diver cats tonight."
Grinning, Dolan leaves the armory behind, with its imperfect unpacking job. There are things that can be done tomorrow. So he pads out behind Andelena, a chuckle escaping him. "Good. Let's get while we can. I could use that bath, and we could both use some sleep."
If she'll let him, he moves to slip out of the armory. Last one out gets the lights.
"We're sleeping in as long as the ladies let us," Andelena says firmly, getting the mana lamps as the Daeusite duo leave the armory behind with a click of the lock on the door. "Which is to say maybe half an hour before they start roaring outside of our door and clawing at it like they're angry customers at the Fernwood."
She follows behind him into the bathing room, setting about the process of retrieving water and the salts they traditionally use for the waters. "Speaking of which. Been a minute. We ought to go out for a date somewhere nice, yeah? And then fuck like rabbits after." Romance clearly doesn't die in Andelena's brain after marriage. Or, well, her definition of it.
Dolan's weary chuckle contains not a hint of wickedness in it, and he discards his remaining clothing while the bath is drawn. This fact along should tell Andelena most clearly about his current state of mind. "Wherever you want to go, baby."
"I'll pick out a nice place," Andelena says, smiling affectionately at Dolan. "Maybe somewhere a little nicer than the Fernwood. I'll ask Telamon about it, maybe. He's a little ritzy in tastes but I can't deny he has good ideas."
The bath's run, and she gently pours the salts into the waters with a scoop. "Need a hand getting in, babe?" she asks. "And don't worry. We're going right to sleep after this. Just didn't want you going to sleep feeling sore and then having you wake up stiffer than a war golem's joints."
Dolan shakes his head, already moving to climb into the hot waters even as the salts are poured in. "I'm okay, baby." A long, heartfelt sigh of relief escapes him, then, as he sinks up to his neck into hot water. "Thank you for that, baby. I was half afraid you'd think I'd come in drunk."
"The only thing I'd be mad about you coming home drunk for is that I didn't get to get drunk with you, babe," Andelena says with a small smile as she goes to prepare towels for when Dolan's ready to get out of the bath. "And frankly, after doing the Knight's work and facing down what you did? I wouldn't even be mad about that."
She smiles just a little wider as she leans against the wall. "Nope, we'll just go cozy up in bed. You, me, and the cats." She doesn't bother saying that they're his cats this time. He'll find it funnier in the morning. Doesn't stop her smile from perking up a little at the corner now.
He, too, is smiling as he closes his lone remaining eye, but he doesn't answer beyond that, and in the end, it isn't long before he's snoozing gently in the bathtub. He must really have been tired and aching. She'll have to wake him up to get him out of there, and he's not much more than a zombie getting into the bed.
That's okay, though. There are still kitties and a wife to snuggle with.