You Need a Bath
Log Info
- Title: You Need a Bath
- Emitter: Dolan
- Place: Dolan's apartment
- Summary: Dolan returns from a Temple of Eluna-requested Guild job looking tired and smelling pretty bad. Andelena greets him at the door, and he debriefs her on the matter while she runs him a bath. Dolan requests Andelena's aid in finding the Nightmare, and Andelena accepts--but first, she wants to take care of him. A medicinal bath is run and they discuss their relationship over salted bath waters.
-=--=--=--=--=--=--=--=--=--=- Dramatis Personae =--=--=--=--=--=--=--=--=--=- Andelena 6'0" 180 Lb Human Female Redhead with steel-grey eyes and powerful build. Dolan 5'10" 174 Lb Human Male Brown-haired human with scars down his face. -=--=--=--=--=--=--=--=--=--=--=--=--=--=--=--=--=--=--=--=--=--=--=--=--=--=-
Dolan had taken a Guild job some days ago, and had been gone for most of a week now. She had been told about it, of course - it had been asked for by the Temple of Eluna, investigating a strange mound associated with recent disappearances. A fairly routine thing - or is it?
It's about midafternoon, leaning towards evening, when the door rattles and opens, to admit him, looking exhausted, sweaty, with dark circles under his eyes. He moves like he's aching quite a bit, but along with sword and armor carries a couple of thick-looking tomes. The books are deposited on the nearest table, and he begins to pull the pack from his shoulders.
And Andelena happens to be home when Dolan is, lounging on the couch as she's fiddling with a grip strengthener tool--one of her common habits when she's got nothing to do. She's dressed only in a tank top and one of their pants again (the question of whose pants they happened to be is rather moot by now). But the moment Dolan steps in the door, she sits up on the couch and smiles.
Even when Brydion comes home looking like shit, that smile is still filled with a warmth like the sun, although it turns quickly to a concerned frown. She hops up from the couch. "Hey Bry--damn, you look tired. And kind of hurt. Here, lemme get those for you," Andelena says, moving to take the pack from him. She manages to push a peck onto his cheek somewhere in the process.
As is common with days in the field, the pack smells, and so does he, including the coppery tang of old blood. He wearily hands over the pack, smiling at the peck on the cheek. "Thanks, Andie. It's not too bad. You wouldn't happen to know any strong wizards in the city, would you?" Once the pack is off, he slides off the harness holding a sword carefully cleaned and oiled, and the cloak hangs up on its peg near the door, yawning hugely.
"Strong wizards? Hmmm. Can't say I do--I don't generally rub elbows with wizardly folk," Andelena says, taking the pack and putting it where it normally sits when it's not in action. She sort of regards the pack with a squint--it's not so much that she's looking at it; she happens to be thinking while looking at it.
She turns back to Brydion and slides her arms around him for a hug hello. It's been a few days, after all. "What's got you thinking about wizards? Not exactly the kind of people you usually take an interest in.--Take a seat on the couch and I'll get you a drink or something. You look like you need it."
Despite himself and his best efforts, Dolan does not manage to hold in a grunt at the hug, despite him being in a breastplatethat is secured rather more tightly than is customary. He hugs back regardless, a smile finding his eyes at the affection, and he kisses her on the cheek in resposes, reaching to wrap his arms around her in return. He definitely is in need of a bath.
"Something's using spells that sends nightmares real enough to be reality," he answers. "I want help finding them."
Even in the embrace of the only man--person, really--that she'd allow to hold her like this, Andelena finds herself squinting again as she looks at the wall. Another thinking squint, to be exact. "Do you think that's the source of all of this bullshit?" she asks. "If that's the case, then yeah, let's go find a powerful wizard and end all of this so everyone can get a good night's sleep again."
She takes a sniff and looks at Brydion. "But before any of that, you need a bath, farmboy."
"I'm hoping it'll lead us to whoever's response for this bullshit. We found another of those statues." Grinning at the mention of needing a bath, Brydion gently extricates himself and undoes buckles until he can lift the breastplate off over his head. The gambeson beneath it, spattered with dried blood and with a couple of small, blood-tipped holes in the right side, follows right behind, leaving only the simple, sweat-and-dirt soaked and blood-tipped shirt beneath it. "I could definitely go for a bath."
"Another statue? So we know there's multiples," Andelena says, squinting again as she thinks for a moment--then she walks to the water closet, motioning for Dolan to follow her, and begins running a bath. It's the usual sort of bath that she ends up making, pouring in a bit of medicinal salts that she usually buys at the market in bulk. (Gods know that they use enough of it together.) "And that means someone's either made them in the past or is making them now ."
Once his gear is set aside, belts, armor, weapons, and all, and he's stripped to shirt and trousers, Dolan follows Andelena to the water closet, and carefully shucks the shirt over his head as well to reveal bruising across both sides of his ribs that is colorfully black-blue-yellow-green, and a number of angry red marks across his right side and down both sides of his right arm. Everything looks closed over and healing, and probably just aches at this point. "Yeah. I'm hoping maybe a mage can look at the statue and work out who made it, or who's connected to it. I hope it'll lead me back to this Nightmare bastard, because he's pretty obviously a wizard."
That steel-grey gaze of Andelena's sweeps over Dolan. While there's the undeniable reason why Andelena would be staring at him, her gaze also lingers on his bruising and marks. "What caused all of that ?" she asks, raising a brow. "That bruising looks about as colorful as a noblewoman's daughter playing with mommy's makeup."
She grabs the stool that usually hangs out in the water closet and takes a seat by the bath, grabbing a washcloth that's been left from the last time the bath was used. Preparation for a usual sort of routine: one sits in the bath and the other tends to them.
A routine that Dolan enjoys doing at least as much as he does receiving, but this time, he's the one in need, and so he shucks his trousers and hose, discarding them to the floor without comment after leaving his boots with the rest of his gear. "A door tried to eat me. It thought I was volunteering as dinner and then got angry when I buried a sword in it." This is said with humor. "It hugged hard, though, when it tried to eat me." He turns his arm over, examining the marks. "Some of this is the skeletons the artificer woke up. They exploded when we took them down. These -" He examines a set of closed clawmark-looking marks. "The nightmare."
"A door tried to eat you? There you go, now you're getting into the weird shit," Andelena's grinning now as she leans in and pushes the washcloth into the pleasantly hot and salted water. "Just be glad it was a door and not a naked man covered in bacon grease."
Then there's a beat as she squints at him again. It's both a thinking squint and a 'what the?' squint. "Nightmare? Okay, Bry, you mean to tell me the nightmare was... Real? And the skeletons--"
She sighs. "Okay, start from the beginning, or this all isn't gonna make much sense."
Dolan snorts at the mention of weird shit. "There's plenty of weird shit." He swallows hard and slides with a groan into the bath, sighing with relief. "Yeah. You were stuck late, I'd stopped into a tavern for dinner. That's when it started." He leans back and closes his eyes, and begins the tale. He lays out the story in succinct terms."That was the night before I left, and I'd had someone at the temple look at 'em. Left the next morning, and that's where we found the skeletons and the man-eating door."
Andelena listens to the story, nodding along and squinting at him as he talks at the parts that are the most harrowing. "Huh," she finally concludes, leaning back a bit--she'd been slowly sinking forward the whole time.
She gently puts her washcloth onto Dolan's chest, in a spot that isn't bruised or scratched to hell. Best to start there--and in a lot of ways, it's safest to start there, too. "I have to agree with your conclusion," she says. "Sounds like the Nightmare is the way to go. And if he's some frail, shitty little wizard, I'm gonna punch him in the fuckin' teeth for all the shit he's been putting us through."
"He's a wizard, I'm sure of that much. He killed a guy I had ready to question with magic." Dolan leans back, closing his human eye and submitting to her ministrations. He'll need a good scrubbing, but he hadn't complained any of the times she came back a mess, bacon grease or not. "Someone who can do that is capable of sending nightmares. I'm hoping maybe the statue will lead us back to that guy."
He pauses after a moment, and sits up, freeing himself of her hand. "I need to get this thing off." What he means by thing quickly becomes clear as he reaches up to his right eye socket and twists the ring in a particular pattern, left, right, and left again, and after a couple of minutes of freeing locks and springs, it comes loose, leaving only the metal-inset socket in its wake. "Set this somewhere safe? I'm too tired to focus." He offers the gem in its steel and bronze inset to her. The empty socket of steel and bronze, with its locks and cogs and tiny levers visible on the inside, is unsettling to look at.
Andelena's mid-scrub on Dolan's form when he asks the question. She purses her lips for a moment--there's no getting used to an empty socket, after all--and she nods, setting the washcloth on the rim of the tub as she gets up to quickly dry her hands on a towel and then carefully, carefully set the gem down on a nearby counter.
She walks back to Dolan, picking up the washcloth again and resuming her scrub. She finally gets close to the bruised areas and is much softer with them, very careful in how she attend to them. They still need to be cleaned, but there's a way to do that without putting her man through agony. "I hope so, too," she says. "I want that guy found and brought to the Knight's justice."
Seeing that, Dolan's expression falls just a little, and he turns his head, careful to face away from Andelena even as he adjusts so she can work. The bruises seem to be healing, but gentleness is definitely called for, and his lips tighten in turn. It's been a fewdays since these happened, but they probably were not fun at the time.
"I'm working on that. I'll probably have to killl him," he warns. "If these dreams are aanything to go by, he's less man than monster."
"Oh, honey, unless we find out he's been twisted and pressed into this by something else, I was going to suggest we'd all sleep sounder at night--literally--if he was dead. He's tormented so many," Andelena replies as she carefully tends to him. Gentle, gentle, gentle--that side of her that only he gets to see.
Eventually she stops scrubbing and moves on to another area less tormented by bruising. She looks at him for a moment and says, "Hey. Look at me. I'm not gonna get used to it if you keep hiding it, and I want to love all of you."
There's that compassion of hers again, what makes her the Sunguard between the two.
"I'll sleep sounder, that's for sure." When she moves away from the bruised areas, Dolan lets out a relieved breath, a clear testament to what he was trying to hide - that that was less than fun, although not so bad as it could have been, had she been less gentle. "So will everyone else, and it won't happen if someone doesn't do something about this asshole."
When she tells him to look at her, he doesn't, immediately. "That can't be easy to look at," he answers. "Just was having trouble focusing with it. I haven't slept worth a damn since we found that thing. Sorry to do that to you."
Andelena pauses in her washing efforts again, grey eyes looking at him intently. "It's not," she admits. "But like I said, I'm never going to get used to it if you keep hiding. I want to love all of you. Scars and all--hell, the scars don't even bother me at this point. It's just..."
She leans back, pulling her washcloth back and wringing it dry with a powerful scrunching motion. One gets the sense she'd be doing that to the neck of a demon instead if she happened to be in the room with one. She leans over to a bottle of muscle-soothing oil on the rim of the tub and squirts out a bit onto the cloth, plunging it back into the water and allowing it to soak there before she continues to scrub down some of the scratches.
"You remember when we talked at the Defense? After you got hurt by those puppet things, and I admitted that I feel like I really fucking suck at protecting you... and how I felt that if I'd been there, you'd still have that eye?" Andelena continues as she works. "Yeah. I guess it's still kind of there. But I find looking at your eye... motivates me. To go fuck up every single demon in existence. That drive's a good thing, Bry."
"Maybe. But ... I get to look at the most beautiful woman in the world when I look at you. You get to look at a twisted mess. It's not fair." Slowly, gradually, Dolan had been relaxing under those ministrations, but he's tensed again, and his chin lifts only a little. "I wish I could motivate you to protect people who can't protect themselves." Still, he's smiling, if a little sadly.
A little bit of blood comes away in the scratches as they are scrubbed, mingling crimson with the water. It's not serious, just annoying. ""I don't know if I'd still have it or not. It doesn't matter now. What does matter is - will you help me find the asshole responsibler for these dreams?"
Andelena shakes her head and chuckles. "Brydion, damn it, would I be seriously be sleeping with you and groping your ass every time I pass you in the kitchen if I didn't think you were handsome? Use your damn brain. Scars and all. Eye and all."
She leans in and kisses him on the lips just to prove a point--almost a bit forcefully, but then again, that describes a fair amount of her kisses. "I do want to protect people who can't protect themselves. Why do you think I became a Sunguard? Wasn't to pick up hot ass, that's for damn sure. Honestly didn't think the gods made men like you until you went and fessed up."
His Sunguard partner leans back--just a little--and smiles at him. "Of course I will. We're a team."
This time, Dolan's smile widens even more as his lips touch hers, and he turns to face her fully for the first time since he'd taken the eye out, eye socket and all. It remains even when her lips pull away. "Don't worry, baby, I'll give you all the ass you can handle." His human eye winks broadly. "I figured you were just used to me," he admits, the gaze falling again, just a little. "I'm damned lucky, and I know it. Sometimes I wonder how that even happened - but I'm damned glad it did. You know I still pinch myself sometimes?"
"How could I get used to ass that fine, Bry?" Andelena responds, grinning wickedly. She leans back as she finally finishes scrubbing him, wringing out the washcloth again to rest it on the rim of the tub to dry. "I dunno if the Knight's middle child had much to do with it. Honestly, I was waiting for someone who loved me because I was me , not because of my noble family, not because of what a cute and submissive wife they thought they could make me if I was 'tamed' or some shit--and you did just that, Bry."
She fetches a dry towel from the linen closet and unfolds it, offering it out to him. "Alright. Let's get you a nap, then we're headed out for dinner." There's something in her voice that suggests it's not just a nap. Hell, there might even be more of what's suggested after dinner, too.
The truth is that that washcloth is going to need a scrub of its own. Road dirt is a thing, and Brydion's no different from the times she's been the one to come back. Dolan, at least, is much cleaner, and while she goes to get a towel, he chuckles and hoists himself out of the tub, slowly and carefully. "Bullshit. Nobody's going to tame you, and your parents were stupid as shit if they thought they were going to do anything of the kind." That's not the first time he's said that - or the second - or the thirty-seventh. "It's one of the things I love best about you."
He takes the towel and chuckles, beginning to dry himself. "It's my job to see to it that you don't get used to it, baby. But ... that sleep sounds pretty damn good. I'm just glad I've got you."