“OUT OF THE WAY!” Charlie screamed as she came flying out of her house and tossed what looked like a portable fan that had caught fire into a snowbank. Before she could really take cover the thing blew up sending snow flying everywhere. Luckily nothing dangerous came flying out is as Charlie had managed a containment around the pieces, the snow, however, wasn’t safe.
Her breathing was ragged as she blinked, snow was falling all around her and one piece of burnt paper landed in her hair. Charlie didn’t have the normal put together look she worked towards, her jeans were ripped, and not the stylish rip, the oversized sweatshirt she had on was full of holes and her hair was in a messy bun, her face had smudge marks on it and her hands were filthy, otherwise she was okay.
Athos had spent the last few days over at the shared house with Anne, Aramis, and Porthos to wait out the vampire attacks and had been taking a leisurely stroll back now that they'd been given the all clear message - the attackers had been caught and dealt with; life in Atlantis could go back to 'normal.'
He did not, however, expect to see his blonde roommate (who normally seemed to take a lot of pride in her appearance) storming out of the front door, looking like she'd been through something catastrophic before she'd thrown a bomb(?) into the snowbank. He couldn't entirely make out what it had been since she'd been moving quickly and he wasn't entirely close enough to get the fine details, but he moved to a run once the item had exploded.
"Are you all right?" he asked, coming to a stop next to her and offering a handkerchief to her to clean her hands and face. "What happened?"
Charlie took the handkerchief and started to try and clean her hands, it didn’t do a lot of good. It took her a moment before she turned her head to look at Athos.
“I was starting to wonder if you were ever going to come home.” She responded looking down at the handkerchief. “And I owe you at least another box of these.” The one in her hands was, well, it was going to be dead.
“Oh, I was trying to turn one of those little muggle portable fans into a portable fan heater with some magic.” She shrugged looking at the mess. “It didn’t work.”
"We decided it'd be safer in numbers until the attacks were over," answered Athos, taking in the rest of her answer. "Have you considered a Hair Dryer? Aramis introduced them to me. They blow heated air, which I would guess does what you were trying to do."
He looked down at the snowbank before continuing. "With less explosive results."
“I guess Duke, Regulus and I kept things pretty safe here,” she shrugged before looking over at him and rolling her eyes.
“If I wanted a blow out, sure, but what I want is a fan you can set up next to you, anywhere, including outside and use less power, use magic instead and not freeze when people are stuck outside, or just to have dinner outside, because I don’t know about you, but I miss eating outside on the deck.” She said.
“But I should probably clean up this mess.” She signed looking down at the blown up fan.
"Musketeers are co-dependent," was the reply, accompanied with a smile. "Would a large heat lamp work better than blowing hot air, in any case?" answered Athos, still confused by the whole idea. Technology as a whole was still a constant struggle for him, not to mention the idea of everyday magic, so he always had to come at it from an angle of logic. He, too, missed warmer weather, so he could certainly understand and appreciate the sentiment.
After her sigh and glance, though, he knelt to start picking up pieces of the exploded fan. "Here, let me assist."
Nodding, she had started to guess that, but she also didn't really comment.
"Nope, not the goal, part of it is portable, keyword, and I don't want to carry around some massive thing for a friendly drink on a mates deck, that'd be silly, of course, a foldable one could be fun, and I don't want to just always have to charm, especially after a couple of glasses of bubbly." The truth was that Charlie just liked to mess with things and this wasn't any different.
Dropping to her knees, she looked over at Athos and smiled. "You don't need to get dirty, but I do appreciate the help if we just pick up the big pieces I can get the rest with a spell." She wanted to save the big pieces and didn't want to add any more magic to them yet.
Athos was about to comment that every lamp he owned was portable, but he wasn't here to get into an argument and assumed she had her reasons - she was intelligent and skilled, he didn't want to assume he knew enough about technology to even try and keep up. Still, he was a gentleman and wasn't about to make her clean this up by herself if he was here and able to help. Though he had to admit, having a spell that could clean up the majority of it was quite handy.
"Dirt washes off, but that's a good plan. There don't seem to be too many pieces remaining, big or small. I'd call that a successful explosion," he added, smirking softly as he collected a few of the larger pieces for her.
Charlie looked over with a mock glare before sighing as she got the other bigger pieces. “I suppose if I want to create a fan set to blow up, I did accomplish that.” She admitted with a sigh, he was right though, there weren’t a lot of big pieces, pausing she summoned a bag and put the pieces she’d picked up in it and held it open for him to do the same.
“Thanks for helping, I owe you dinner.” She said reaching up and using the back of her right arm to push away from fallen strands of hair.
"For coming home at just the right time?" asked Athos, depositing the pieces he'd picked up into the bag while marveling at the magic that brought it to her hand. He briefly wondered if there was a way to imbue that kind of thing into trinkets so people could summon their sword to hand or similar. But that was the way his mind worked, always considering the tactical advantage of things.
"I imagine anyone walking by would have done the same. Give me a pass on missing my share of the chores over the last few days and we'll call it even." Athos smiled and gestured back towards the house, to allow her to enter first and lead the way.
Charlie tilted her head as she tied up the back and charmed it so the pieces wouldn’t cut through the bag.
“You should learn to say ‘thanks! Dinner would be great!’” It was mostly a tease. “You might be my housemate, but how often do you get offered a free dinner by a blonde covered in parts of a blown up fan?”
Putting his hand to his chin for a moment, Athos considered what she had to say. "I suppose you're right. A free dinner would be appreciated, absolutely. And you make a fine point; they're usually brunette."
Charlie bent down and formed a quick snowball throwing it at Athos before heading inside without a word, there was a hint of a smirk.