Log [Alison, Domino] That Thing Called Love...

[x-dazzler.livejournal.com]

Domino decides she needs some fresh air. Alison decides she wants to use the same door to come in as Dom wants to use to get out. There's bristling, and then Alison chooses a bad moment to get in touch with her witty-would-be-British side. (She still insists it was a fluke.) Then there are tearful confessions and nasty migraines.

She needed some fresh air. Getting downstairs and outside without anyone seeing her was turning out to be quite demanding, but Domino was really not feeling like conversation. Any kind of conversation. She'd seen Nathan earlier, found out about Amanda's friend, and damn it, she just didn't want to have to deal. Maybe that was selfish, but so what.

"Eeep!" Ok, so opening the door only to see a deadly white woman wasn't the best way to keep Alison's heart rate anywhere near healthy. The proof of this fact, she thought, wasn't one she'd needed that badly, though. "Don't do that," Alison muttered, one hand resting on her chest, as she considered how to skitter around Domino to get inside. "And hi. How's your head?" She had, after all, been the one to tell Nathan to knock out Domino. Asking was only polite. And stuff.

"My head?" Domino asked a bit blankly, staring at Alison. "What was... oh." She raised an eyebrow suddenly. "Did you tell him to knock me out?" she demanded. "Because he doesn't usually hit me."

"Er. Well, yeah. You two would have just stood there and argued until someone decided to impound the Jet and I didn't feel like dealing with Haroun's woe over that if it happened." Erk. And she was still stuck outside too, having yet to figure out how to get inside past Domino, who was still blocking the door.

"Figures," Domino said bitterly, trying to step around the woman. Why wouldn't she get out of the way? "Men knocking me on the head for their own convenience... they can all go to hell."

"Huh." This time it was Alison's turn to not move, one hand settling on her hip as she looked Domino over. "Should you be going outside alone like that? You're not looking so good. And you should duck next time, you know," she added absently.

"I am not some kind of invalid! And you can go to hell too!" Domino snapped, knowing perfectly well she sounded childish and petulant and really, kind of semi-hysterical, but fuck it all. Seriously. She turned and started to stalk away, although yet another damned dizzy spell chose that moment to hit and it was more of a menacing totter. "Fucking people badgering me to eat and sleep and talk about my problems..."

"Uh huh." Stepping inside, Alison closed the door firmly behind her then walked up to Domino. "Wall's to your right. Lean. And if you'd rather, I can just knock you out again and drag you off to the nearest couch and leave you there to rest up more?" She stood nearby, hands in her pockets. She'd been in that exact mental state herself more than once - she wasn't about to do anything to offend Domino further. Except breathe. Breathing was sort of required and well, Domino could take offense all she wanted, Alison wasn't about to stop.

Domino proceeded to embarrass herself, completely and utterly, to the point where she would never, ever quite forgive herself, by bursting into tears at the same moment that she burst into laughter.

"Y-You sound just like P-Pete." It came out almost in a muted wail.

Domino was crying. Blinking, Alison stood there for a moment, the situation slowly sinking in. Domino. Womanly weeping - well, ok, more like sobbing with a few sniffles and a quickly stuffed nosed from what she could tell crying. But yes. Domino. Crying. And still actually trying to laugh while crying. Right, she ought to do something. "I… ok, no knocking out, but couch, yes? Ok?" reaching out she steered the woman in the direction of the nearest couch she could think of, casting about a vaguely helpless look - no rescue at hand, though, it seemed. Aack. And Pete. The rest of Alison's thoughts caught up with her at that moment, with a very firm mental smack.  "And, erm. Oops?"

She needed the support a little more than she would ever have admitted aloud. Okay, a lot more. Hiccupping, trying desperately to stop crying, Domino sank down onto the couch, and the tiny part of her that was still thinking properly was more than a little amused by how bewildered Blaire looked. It was a very tiny part, though.

"She won't even talk about him. Amanda. She won't talk about him, like he doesn't even exist anymore, and Moira looks like she wants to kill him, and Nate just looks perplexed, the idiot..."

Alison held her breath at those words, suddenly very glad that Domino was looking down just then, blinking away tears. Oh crap. Oh no, not this, oh crap. Suck it up, Blaire. You started this whole thing, now deal.

"The whole Hellfire Club thing," she said, taking shallow breath, hoping talking about this with Domino of all people wouldn't trigger one of the usual migraines whenever Pete was brought up for too long in a conversation. At least Domino wasn't a telepath - surely that'd help a little bit…

"He's s-sitting across... from Shaw. Sebastian Shaw." It came out in a wail again, if a quiet one. The tears just would not stop. Fuck. "And when he told me, it was like he didn't care, like he didn't remember... he said there was no d-difference between Shaw and..." She couldn't force the words out through the quiet, desolate sobs.

Somehow, Alison thought, when Pete had asked her to inquire about how Domino was doing, this was most certainly not what he'd meant. What was she supposed to tell him now? 'Uh yeah. Eating her heart out over you and trying to get herself killed in Chad, while changing her life's path away from being a hired killer to something else by turning on a dime' or something? Gah!

The spike of pain searing through her eyes and down the side of her head to lodge in her neck was very much a sign of impending misery. Realizing that one arm had slipped around Domino's still too frail shoulders to hold her comfortingly, Alison winced at the migraine settling in with a vengeance and patted Domino's arm consolingly.

It took a few minutes for her voice to come back. "He was the one who s-stayed with me." Domino wiped frantically at her eyes, but the tears kept coming. "After they got me back from Shaw's m-men, and Nate snapped and ran off to blow up everything with his name on it in Latin America, and GW had to go after him..."

"Wha..." This had not happened while Nathan was at the mansion, Alison would have said, had it not been for the blinding pain manifesting itself with increasing regularity. As such the half muttered word was easily left to stand alone, an open invitation for Domino to keep talking, Al's hand patting her arm still through pure reflex. Patting the crying woman's arm is what Alison would have bloody well expected from anyone else where she the one doing the wailing, after all.

"You know, I t-think that's when I fell in l-love with him? Stupid... just because he did Nate a favor and sat with some messed-up kid when she was f-falling apart..."

"Oh… really?" Alison said a bit faintly. 'Oh yeah, Pete. Domino? She's doing fiiine. Totally in love with you too, pining and all now. Yeap. Didja know? Betcha you did.' The somewhat hysterical train of thought was lost as Alison stopped patting Domino's arm slowly, closing her eyes as the migraine thrummed to vicious and very present life. It almost felt right, in a way. A balancing out, for what she'd put in motion, of sorts.

"I would have gone with him." It was the first time she'd admitted that to anyone, even herself, and the fact that she was saying it to Blaire was just too fucking funny. Really. She was laughing and crying at the same time again. "Even with Shaw there... would've gone with him, if he'd asked. He just had to a-ask..."

The migraine neatly ate up any thinking processes left at that point, gleefully chomping through Alison's mind at a rapid fire pace. "Ow." The whimper escaped her entirely unbidden, but it was that or begging for mercy and the latter would only lead to more excruciating pain should explanations be demanded. One hand pressed to her face, Alison tried taking shallow breaths to fight off the nausea that was moving into keep the migraine company, now doing a bit more clinging to Domino, than comforting shoulder holding.

Realization finally penetrated Domino's abject misery, and she pulled back a little, blinking through her tears at Alison. "What... what's wrong with you?" The other woman was doing this odd... slumping sort of thing, and Domino started to feel honestly panicked. She hadn't done anything, had she? She grabbed at Blaire's arms to support her. "Alison?"

"S'just migraine." Stupid words were slurring, Alison knew. But getting away from Domino, while her best bet at settling the conflict of shielding and knowing and wanting to explain it all, wasn't going to happen just yet. "Happens. Meds in room. Be fine." She just somehow had to get back up there. Without, so help her God, throwing up on the way over. This was the first time one of the reaction migraines had struck so quickly and with overwhelming intensity.

Past mistress of the bubbleheaded act Domino might be, but underneath it all was the young woman who'd been raised by a ex-CIA field officer and a mutant supersoldier, and if there was one thing that Domino could do, it was pull herself together when she needed to. Even if she'd just been sobbing her heart out. Her own shit could wait until later.

Domino wiped at her eyes ruthlessly and got up, tugging Alison to her feet as well. The dizziness came and went again, but she ignored it. "Come on, then," she muttered. "You'll have to tell me where your room is... and if Plastic Butt's there he'd better not suggest I did anything to you or I'm kicking his ass."

"H'better hug me," Alison mutter indistinctly, "an' stuff meds down m'throat, or'll kick his butt m'self." She closed her eyes and swallowed heavily as Domino helped her up, and tried not to lean too heavily on her while being led out of the room.

Well, she thought vaguely, at least she'd kept her from heading off outside. Surely that had to scale in somewhere on the cosmic balance of things good and bad one had done in their lives.