open | i'll never die, i am a freak

[brushoff]

Who: Dorian Gray & OPEN
What: settling in
When: all throughout the month of March
Where: Milton, with a focus on the community hall, the church, and the outskirts

Content Warnings: drug use, smut, body horror and gore in the form of Dorian's creepyass portrait, others tba

( catch all post for March! full of open and closed starters, dm me if you have an idea~ )

Comments

[brushoff]

"Probably not?" said with a little shrug. "You look a bit too young for our demographic. Dorian Gray and the Hedonists."

He moves his hands to the side a little, gesturing as if he was showing off a name on a marquee.

"Also you probably haven't heard of us because we weren't really big. Oh, I wouldn't admit that at the time, of course. But hindsight is twenty-twenty. We had one moderate single and that's about it."

[desperate_times_right]

Chloe sincerely doubts that she's too young for whatever music a guy clearly familiar with metal had played, but she’ll take the flattery.

“Dorian Gray, huh?” It does sound like the sort of band that might have played the types of venues she’d partied at in her teens, but it doesn't bring any music to mind. “You don't sound Australian so you're probably right. Live and learn, I guess.”

She tilts her head. “What kind of music were you hoping for? There are records at the library, but Rorschach is always playing the Beatles in there.”

[brushoff]

"Like I said, something you can dance to," he sighs. "Pet Shop Boys, Adam and the Ants...hell, I'd even take Small Faces or one of those horrible 1990s club acts at this point. You can dance to some of the Beatles. But who the fuck is going to lose themselves to Strawberry Fields Forever?"

Later Beatles are not conducive to dancing! Dorian will die on this hill!

[desperate_times_right]

“You don't think I'm contemporary with music from the nineties?”

That was when she’d listened to the most music!

[brushoff]

A pause.

A frown.

A once-over.

"Right, you might be contemporary with music from the nineties. When are you from?"

[desperate_times_right]

“Twenty eighteen.” She’d spent most of the nineties at boarding school. “You?”

[brushoff]

"Twenty fourteen," Dorian muses, with a little nod. "And may I just say, I love finding people here close to our time. I keep running into Victorians! And people from other worlds!"

[desperate_times_right]

“Right? It's exciting to actually find someone from the twentieth century, let alone the twenty-first.” A few people from the 80s and 90s are starting to feel modern to her.

[brushoff]

"When I first arrived here, I mentioned that I had no idea how I was going to get a house as I doubted my credit score traveled with me," Dorian sighs. "I think that cute Victorian thought I was insane. I don't like thinking about things like my credit score, but they come up when you talk about housing! I used to be a banker! I have to think about these things!"

[desperate_times_right]

Oh, buddy. Your experiences are not universal. Though at least she knows what a credit score even is. Two of her friends even have a mortgage!

“You can not be that hard up already.” Look, Chloe is friends with a couple of those guys but there are no cute ones!

[brushoff]

"What, one of them's cute," Dorian points out, with a little frown. "He's got hair like this."

And Dorian gestures at his forehead, pushing back imaginary bangs in a way that's very Thomas Jopson.

[desperate_times_right]

“Okay, fair.” He probably is the best-looking of the sailors, or maybe Little if you could take him out of the context of his constant misery. “Nice eyes. I stabbed him once.”

[brushoff]

"Did he deserve it?"

Which is not really the sort of question you ask someone when you hear that they stabbed a man.

[desperate_times_right]

“Yeah, probably.” Also maybe not the expected answer to that sort of question. “But it was fucked up. We were under the influence of evil magic or whatever, so I probably wouldn't have done it otherwise.”

[brushoff]

"Mmm," Dorian says, making a casual noise of acknowledgement. He looks over at Chloe before looking up at the sky. He blinks slightly as he pauses, the sort of pause that's just 'drug addled man trying to run through all his emotions to come to a certain conclusion.'

"The last time I was under the influence of evil magic, I tried to jump off my high-rise apartment balcony. Though technically it was evil demons in the cocaine—not this cocaine, though, this cocaine is great."

Again! Totally normal thing to say!

[desperate_times_right]

Chloe nods. “I dated this guy once who jumped off a building after he got dosed with water cursed by an evil djinn or something, but that was because of a woman mostly.”

Also fire.

“That sucks, though. How do demons possess something without a soul?”

[brushoff]

Huh.

That's a very valid point. In fact, it's a bit more of a point towards 'the cocaine wasn't possessed, Dorian just had a bad batch' which is something that's been playing in the back of his mind ever since that experience.

We're not gonna think too hard about that, though!

"I don't know. They just do? I'm not an expert in possession, of course."

[desperate_times_right]

“You’ve been possessed, which I'd say makes you more of an expert than me!” She hadn't even had any of the stupid genie water since the cult or whatever had only used it on the guys.

[brushoff]

"It was only one time!" Dorian giggles. "How the hell is one time an expert? If I managed to land a bullseye one time, I wouldn't say I'm an expert in archery."

[desperate_times_right]

“More than me,” Chloe insists, “if I'd never managed to land any! I don't even know if demons are real.”

Though if zombies and djinni are, the odds are good.

[brushoff]

"They are," he points out. "I've found that if there are stories about it, legends, myths and fantasies, then more likely than not it's true."

He is shooting a massive hole in his 'I'm just a normal guy' facade, but Dorian is far too high to care at the moment.

[desperate_times_right]

“It's not always right, though.” Fortunately for Dorian, this is normal shop talk among the people Chloe works with. “I almost died so many times going after this legendary giant sapphire and it turned out to be evil tree sap.”

[brushoff]

"Now that sounds like a story," Dorian muses. "I'll tell you one of mine if you tell me that one in return?"

[desperate_times_right]

Chloe shrugs with a little smile, ambling off toward the church.

“Sure. In your world, do you know Shambhala? Shangri-La? Marco Polo wrote that he’d seen a giant sapphire there, 'as big around as the reach of a man’s arms.' I was working with some guys who were looking for it and it got pretty ugly. Got shot, there was a train crash, the yetis…” Yeah, they were just guys, but they were super strong annoying guys! “Turned out there was this tree there, the tree of life or whatever, and the sap was blue, absurdly flammable, and had some wild effects if you ate it. We barely made it out.”

[brushoff]

As Chloe mentions Shambhala, Dorian makes a little noise of acknowledgement. He's always had a fondness for mysteries, hideaways, stories of fantastic beings or places that may or may not exist. Of course he knows what Shambhala is.

The yetis and the sapphire and the tree sap is a bit new. But it's interesting all the while!

"Oooh, lucky. I've dealt with sea monsters and banshees, but never any yetis. I should find one and cross it off my bucket list."