falling ill

[keep_busy]

A few months after the business with the chalice, Annie (with a gold engagement stud in one earlobe, now receiving mail at Aldaras's apartment, and thoroughly comfortable with Being Necklaced, to the point where she's helping mold the thing towards more exacting standards for real-world-practical as well as theoretical compatibility) is in bed with some unidentified sort of head cold or flu. Aldaras doesn't have it so far, so she is snuggled under the covers while he makes her spicy soup to help clear her sinuses and because she's having a little trouble with non-liquids. He's worried, she's mostly just groggy. Zzzz.

Comments

[keep_busy]

"Well, maybe we can just have a very private ceremony and then it won't matter."

[namesthesky]

Spring steps through the portal.

[darkest_evening]

Prime - observes this.

"The wedding plans are up to you. If you'll excuse me, though..."

He would like to go check on Spring.

[namesthesky]

She is going from the Belfry to her house.

[darkest_evening]

"Are you all right?"

[namesthesky]

"I'm - about the same on net."

[darkest_evening]

"... Okay. Do let me know if there's anything I can do to help?"

[namesthesky]

"I'm going to go with 'not necessarily'. You could probably guess why if you thought about it."

[darkest_evening]

Oop. Yes, that's a thing he could do to help.

"That - makes sense."

[namesthesky]

"Yeah."

Droop.

[darkest_evening]

Well. That's a bit heartbreaking.

His answer: scoop her up into a gentle hug.

[namesthesky]

Whimper, cling, sigh.

[darkest_evening]

"That might have made it worse, I apologize," he murmurs. "But you also looked like you desperately needed a hug."

[namesthesky]

"You can hug me whenever you want," she murmurs.

[darkest_evening]

"Thank you, but I also don't want to make your life any more difficult in doing so."

[namesthesky]

"That's not really - how I'm conceptualizing it."

[darkest_evening]

"... Are you willing to explain, or...?"

[namesthesky]

"Do you want to hear it?"

[darkest_evening]

"I wouldn't have asked if I didn't."

[namesthesky]

"I just - when there aren't Adarins around the other Bells giggle about what prudes you all are and I'm not sure you thought that through in terms of whether you want to hear it as opposed to whether you ought to ask."

[darkest_evening]

"The difference between me and the other Adarins is that I have been around for five hundred years. I did not spend them locked in a closet. I can almost guarantee that whatever you're going to say, I've heard worse."

Or possibly done worse, but that's neither here, nor there.

[namesthesky]

"You having heard worse is not exactly the standard I was asking about."

[darkest_evening]

"Fair, but what I mean to say is - I'm not wandering into this blind, proclaiming with arrogance, 'Yes, I will definitely be fine.' I genuinely understand the sorts of things I can listen to, and you're not in the right genre to make me balk. If you would prefer not to tell me, that's fine, but please don't think I don't know what I'm getting into and cannot take the truth."

[namesthesky]

"Ever since I touched the necklace I've been swinging between despair and terror and lust. None of them are how I'd choose to spend all my time but the third is the most pleasant. So while it technically makes some things worse when you - hug me or anything - it is overall better."

[darkest_evening]

"Okay," agrees Prime. "I think I can help with the despair, the terror would depend on the type. Lust I would have to think about for an extended period of time to take care of personally, but please don't feel like I would, for example, be upset if you asked me to leave you alone at very convenient intervals so you could work on taking care of that."

He says this all quite casually, and hasn't pulled away from the embrace at all.