Skulduggery Pleasant - Period

"Damn… Not now…"

Valkyrie Cain cursed and held her stomach while she had to fight the nausea that sneaked up on her. She took a few deep breaths and closed her eyes in an attempt to calm herself down. It helped a little but she knew that her stomach ache soon would increase in strength if she didn't manage to eat a painkiller in the upcoming minutes.

She walked out of the kitchen and into the bathroom. She opened the bathroom cabinet and saw to her horror that she was out of painkillers. The panic started to grow inside her and she took up her phone and called a number. While she waited for the person at the other end to answer she continued to take deep, calm breaths to hold both the panic and the pain away.

"Yes?" Skulduggery Pleasant answered. "Is it important? I am quite busy at the moment."

"It is an emergency, Skulduggery! I am out of painkillers!"

It became quiet for a few seconds. When Skulduggery answered he sounded tired. "In what way is that an emergency?"

Valkyrie closed her eyes when a new wave of pain flowed through her midriff. "Because I am in desperate need of some pain relief right now!"

"Last I saw you all your wounds had healed and you were declared healthy by Synecdoche. Have something happened to you under the two hours that has passed since we separated?"

Valkyrie moaned and held her stomach. "You… could say that, yes…"

Now Skulduggery sounded worried. "Valkyrie, what has happened?"

"I have stomach ache. You know, that kind that we women get sometimes."

"Ah."

"What do you mean with 'ah'?!" Valkyrie said annoyed.

"Now I understand why you have been in such a bad mood these last couple of days. You are on your period, right?"

"Yes and I would appreciate if you could come over with some painkillers and keep me company until the worst pain have disappeared."

"I will come as soon as I can, Valkyrie. I am going to finish here. I can be at your place in around twenty minutes. While you wait you can maybe put on a movie and pick up the heating blanket I gave you? I want to remember you saying it usually helps."

"Thank you, Skulduggery. Please, hurry up are you so kind."

"I will be there soon", Skulduggery said in a pitiful tone and hung up.

Valkyrie walked into the bedroom and picked up the heating blanket before she walked to the living room and laid down on the sofa. She plugged the blanket into the electrical outlet behind the sofa and then turned on the TV. While she waited for Skulduggery and the painkillers she zapped between different TV channels but couldn't find anything she wanted to look at. Instead she selected Disney+ and put on "Beauty and the Beast" that was her favourite of all the disney movies.

She had come to the part of the movie where Belle just have arrived at the Beast's castle when she heard a knock on the door. She didn't have the strength to get up so instead she shouted "Come in!"

Skulduggery walked into the living room with a bag in one of his hands and a package with chocolate in the other. Valkyrie smiled when she saw the chocolate. "Thanks! How did you know that I needed chocolate right now?"

"Because it is not the first time you are calling me regarding this. I do not know if you have forgotten it Valkyrie, but you have told me more than once how miserable you become under these days every month if you don't get your painkillers and your chocolate so I was thinking that I should be kind and ease your pain a little." Skulduggery walked over to Valkyrie and gave her the box of chocolates.

Valkyrie smiled and gave his cheekbone a kiss in thanks before she took out a piece of chocolate from the box. While she chewed she looked at the bag in Skulduggery's second hand. She pointed at it and lifted her eyebrows questioningly.

"Yes, it's your painkillers. Do you want me to get you a glass of water so you can wash them down?"

Valkyrie nodded and soon she had an ice cold glass of water in her hand. She took a pill out of the package and swallowed it down together with the water. She sighed in relief and laid herself down on the sofa again. She clapped her feet and turned towards Skulduggery. "Can't you sit down next to me and watch the movie together with me? It will be a while before the pill starts having effect and I would like to have someone that can distract me until the pain disappears."

Skulduggery did as he had been asked, but instead of sitting down next to Valkyrie's feet he lifted her up and lay her in his lap. Her head rested against his chest and her legs lay over his. He made sure that the heating blanket lay against her stomach before he took the blanket that hung over the armrest and laid it around Valkyrie to make sure she was warm.

"Mm… You sure know how to make a woman feel appreciated when she feels bad, Skulduggery…" Valkyrie whispered and made herself comfortable against him while she continued to watch the movie.

Skulduggery laughed and hugged Valkyrie. He let his cheek rest against her head while he stroked her back slowly. He could feel how Valkyrie relaxed more and more. It wasn't long before she was completely relaxed and stopped breathing laboriously. Skulduggery didn't know if it was the painkillers or the heating blanket that had started to work, or if it was his presence. He suspected that it could be a mixture of all three, but he didn't really care which. The only thing that was important was that Valkyrie felt comfortable.

"Now comes one of my favourite scenes." Valkyrie smiled and pressed herself closer to Skulduggery. "It really shows how lonely the Beast is and in how much pain he is."

"Oh, yeah?" Skulduggery asked and looked up at the movie.

"Yes. He has been a beast for so many years and hasn't had any contact with the outside world since he was transformed which has turned him into a kind of social outcast. He knows that if he would show himself to other humans he would not get accepted but just hunted down and be called awful things. When he finally gets to meet Belle he becomes happy to meet another human that he can talk to, but he does not know how to behave since he was spoiled as a kid and is used to get his will through. Belle dares to argue against him and voice her oppinion about things that are happening, which he is not used to.

When she then is doing what is absolutely forbidden – walks into his private chamber to see what he is hiding in there – he of course gets really angry at her and since he has anger issues he overreacts and gets her to run away. He then understands what he has done and gets miserable, but then the damage is already done. He follows after her when she rides away – maybe to apologize, maybe to make sure that she gets home safely since he knows that there are a lot of wolfs around – and sees her getting attacked. He decides to protect her and this is his first unselfish act he has done in his whole life, which makes Belle look at him in a different light. This makes them to open up to one another and eventually they fall in love."

"Have you just spoiled the rest of the movie for me?" Skulduggery wondered and laughed.

"Oh god, no! It happens a lot of other things as well. Stay and watch the rest of the movie with me and you will see. You might even like it."

"Well, I can not complain that much thus far. I must confess that my curiosity is awakened."

"Good", Valkyrie answered and laid her arms around Skulduggery, the pain in her stomach now totally forgotten about.

They sat close to each other and continued to hold one another under the rest of the movie. When it was over Valkyrie looked up at Skulduggery and asked what he thought.

"Could we watch it from the beginning? I think that I missed some parts of it."

Valkyrie howled with joy and rewinded the movie. Some time under her second watching she fell asleep with a smile on her lips in Skulduggery's arms.