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

Dorian staggering away from him means Arthur fucking misses, and he goes down hard, slamming into the wooden floor chest-first and knocking the wind out of himself.

--and the fact that even then, it's still easy to breathe, is a gap in the fog, and he pauses for a moment. Which is just long enough to actually hear what Dorian's saying.

Except for the cocaine bit. That gets brushed aside as part of his struggling lucidity.

"Dorian Gray, like-" It's a bit of a wheeze, as he pushes himself onto his hands and knees. "--l-like the book? With the fucking portrait?"

"Yes like the book with the fucking portrait, you—"

But this moment of calm makes something twinge in Dorian's brain. One brief, strong thought cuts through his panic and anger and desire to do whatever it takes to get his body back.

"You should know that already. But you don't."

There wasn't any hint of recognition in that man's voice. If anything, it was more along the lines of confusion. And why would something designed to torment him, something designed to remind him of just how much of a monster he truly is, sound confused?

Dorian's still keeping his distance between himself and Arthur as he asks, "So who the hell are you?"

"How do you--" He slaps a hand out, getting a grip on the edge of a desk so he can pull himself to his feet with a grunt and immediately sway a bit too concerningly. "Why don't you know that? I-I-I thought..."

He rubs his face with one hand, and has to marvel for a moment at how fucking soft his skin is. "So you're... not the King?"

Dorian winces slightly as he sees that sway. Because he knows what that it. It's early enough in the day that daylight is on full blast. And creature of the night that he is now, he knows Arthur in his body probably feels like absolute shit.

Of course, he's going to lie like a little bitch about the cause.

"Go back to my room and sit on the bed. I might have had a teensy bit too much fun last night, which you are undoubtedly feeling now." Easy enough to blame it on mushrooms and poorly distilled hooch. "But no. I'm not the King. I don't even know what your King is a king of."

"Th-the King in Yellow, he's this- this god, he's..."

He... doesn't exist anymore. Right? It's just Yellow, now.

Fuck, everything hurts, and he closes his eyes as a dizzy spell makes his face blanch.

"A-and you’re... this- i-it isn't a fucking hangover." Take it from a man who's had more than his fair share. Obviously not on Dorian's level, but still. "You're sick, or- or something, Christ. Of all the fucking luck..."

Time for more lying! But this is absolutely believably lying considering that multiple people have seen Dorian tripping balls earlier last month.

"Of course it's not just a hangover. It's also the cocaine," said with zero hesitation. "Most of it was a good batch, but hell if I know why it's taken you for a loop like this. I suspect the cocaine and the pine wine might not be the best combination."

There's a very dry and a completely unapologetic, "Whoopsie."

Even if someone bounced into his body while he was hungover or having the world's worst drug trip, he wouldn't apologize. Maybe don't take over his body then, huh?

Arthur squints at him - he doesn't believe that for a fucking moment. This is something wrong, something about it just feels far deeper - but he also hasn't got the mental acquity to argue right now.

"Right. Sure." He pushes off the desk, immediately stumbles - it's only through Arthur's own reaction time, a spark of panic behind the deadened senses at the sudden shift in gravity making him feel like he's falling - that he manages to grab onto the doorframe instead to steady himself with both hands, and slumps against it with shaking knees.

"If this is your fucking fault," he calls back coolly, glaring over his shoulder, "You could at least give me a fucking hand."

"I hope that you're just talking about the cocaine," Dorian points out, as he makes his way towards Arthur. If allowed, he'll wrap a hand around his waist and drape one of Arthur's (one of Dorian's own?) arms over his shoulder. It's an awkward sort of carry, the 'let's get our drunk buddy back home from the bar' sort of carry—Dorian has no idea how strong Arthur's body is and he's certainly not going to harm his own body in the attempt.

"Because this body nonsense certainly isn't. I've only experienced something like that once before and it had a cause—a cause that I can't replicate."

Arthur's body, funnily enough, is a lot stronger than it looks, and while it's ungainly because Dorian's body is coked out the eyeballs (allegedly), it's still not as bad as it could be getting it back into bed.

But Arthur collapses in a heap when Dorian drops him, and it takes him a moment to get himself into position sitting upright against the wall.

"So. How do we swap back, then? If you've experienced this before?"

Dorian adjusts his position, casually leaning against the wall as well. And now that Arthur's awake enough to get a better look at Dorian's bedroom, he can see that it's...odd. Having once been the priest's apartment next to the church, the room still holds traces of a spartan lifestyle. But Dorian, hedonist that he is, has been trying to change that. There's a nice rug, better-than-average bedsheets, and a large, slightly cracked mirror in the corner. A small stack of books sits on the bedside table—all trashy paperbacks in various stages of ill-use. This is a sparse room that someone has tried to make decadent.

"That's the problem," Dorian answers, with an annoyed little sigh. "The thing that swapped me before was an item. I doubt the name Deacon Brodie means anything to you? He's the one that put me in another body and he used a key to do it. I woke up in another's body, much like we both did this morning, but I remember the transfer. Nothing of the sort happened this time."

He shakes his head and immediately regrets it, pressing a fist against his mouth until the world stops spinning.

"That's- waking up somewhere weird. Happens here a bit." He swallows thickly, and tries again, a little less thick in the throat. "You're new. Right? Y'might not have been here when the Darkwalker started-" He lifts a hand to roll it in a 'you know?' sort of gesture. "-kidnapping people, trapping them in fucking caves underground. Didn't let us go until we talked about something, s'mething... important.'

Dorian pauses for a moment as he thinks things over. Talk about something important. What the hell is he going to say to that? Hello, don't mind me, I'm a hundred and fifty year old soulless immortal who's watched everyone I love die? Absolutely not. He's Dorian Gray, useless little twenty-something, a cute thing who certainly isn't hiding a billion secrets. If talking about something important is what breaks this, then Dorian's willing to give it a shot—he'll give anything a shot. But there are so many things that are off limits.

His eyes dart to a peacoat hanging in the open closet door. A peacoat that he knows arrived with a little baggie of cocaine in it's pocket, a baggie that is hopefully going to serve as a decent cover story. He doesn't want to talk about this. But it's something that might fit the brief.

There's another slightly awkward pause before Dorian sighs. "Something important? Frankly, I find this sort of forced bonding tacky at best. But you know what? Fine. I'd prefer to get back to my body as quickly as possible so fine! Something important. How's this for important: the main reason I changed jobs back home is that I'm fairly certain I killed my coworker."

Arthur can't help the derisive snort that rips out of him.

"So did I. I went from being a cushy fucking PI to a runaway cultist killer."

He rubs down his face with one hand, hating how the chill on his skin still feels like a furnace.

"My name's Arthur Lester. I'm from Arkham, Massachusetts, and- a-and..."

And his eyes snap abruptly open to lock on Dorian and scowl at him. "W-where's John? What the fuck did you do with him?!"

Dorian rolls his eyes in an overdramatic fashion before pointing out, "Now you ask about John? He's fine, I left him back at your house."

He's angry, fighty, and in about fifteen minutes or so might try to bust down the door and take Arthur back himself, but that counts as 'fine' for Dorian. Besides, they're not talking about John. Arthur said that talking about something important might work, they're talking about something important.

"Tell me about your coworker."

"He's my partner," he corrects tersely. "And if you've taken any time at all to look at my body properly-" with a flap of one hand at his body's everything "-all of those scars happened with him. He saved my life, time and time again, from beings like the Darkwalker."

"Of course I've taken time to look at your body," Dorian snaps. "It's disgusting. You're hanging on by a thread. I don't think there's a part of you that hasn't been chewed up, spit out, or dragged through a ditch. Which is why I'm doing my best to follow your 'talk about something important' hypothesis, so I can get out of this ragged thing."

As he talks, Dorian doesn't bother to hide the sense of loathing and disgust he feels about Arthur's body.

Despite it all, Arthur doesn't actually have any real opinion of his own body. He hates himself, sure, but in a much more ephemeral way than his physical form.

That doesn't mean he appreciates Dorian giving hum shit about it, and his eyes narrow sourly.

"Actually, fuck you." And he shifts to lie down again. "If I'm stuck with your damn hangover you can be grateful I'm sleeping it off for you."

Dorian frowns, looking down at Arthur. And then he decides fuck it. No, they're keeping this conversation going, they're not done with this yet. Not until he gets his goddamn body back.

So, in an entirely petty set of circumstances, Dorian walks over to his bed and just yanks away the pillow. We're not sleeping anything off, especially because he's pretty certain John will find a way to kill him if he doesn't get this sorted (because of course Dorian's getting this sorted, that's how it always works.)

"What the hell do you do anyway? You mentioned 'the King in Yellow.' I'm not up to date on my mythos, but I've at least heard the term. Are you some sort of...Lovecraftian Ghostbuster or something?"

Two words that Dorian doesn't know that Arthur doesn't know.

What Dorian doesn't know Arthur doesn't know could fill five seasons. But when the pillow is yanked back he just closes his eyes for a moment to roll them, and then flops onto his back to glare blearily at his own fucking face.

"I don't know what the fuck you're talking about, but- I am actually a private investigator, still. When I met John I was investigating a missing girl whose death ended up being related to the King, and everything went to shit from there."

There. We've got the start of something going. Hopefully if they just keep talking, they can find at least one fucking point of sympathy.

"How do you get wrapped up in things like that anyway? John isn't the sort of thing you'd meet on the street or at the club. When did he enter the picture?"

Weird creepy eldritch thing, Dorian's dealt with a few of those, that's a much better route to probe than something boring like a missing girl.

Arthur is also absolutely not getting the pillow back. He's treated to seeing his own body clutch the pillow in an act of petty defiance.

Edited 2025-04-09 11:57 (UTC)

The clutching of the pillow is so disappointingly childish, looking at his body being so fucking churlish about it, that he snorts and just closes his eyes again.

"He's a god, too. He was trapped in a book and I opened it." He doesn't feel like giving Dorian more ammo than he has to. "He had to live in my body or he'd get sent back to a hell worse than death, so with him acting as my eyes, we worked together to solve the case of who he was and how to find out what happened to the girl."

A hell worse than death, okay, Dorian can work with that. Except for the big important part where he'd really rather not tell anyone about the fact that he also was trapped in a hell worse than death before. And also, there's the fact that he absolutely refuses to empathize with John, someone who as far as Dorian is concerned, was a right pill about the whole bodyswap thing.

"You obviously can see now. What, did he only have control of your eyes when you were possessed? And how did you get un-possessed to begin with?"

A cold look crosses his face.

"I died and came here," he grunts, rolling to face the wall again. "I don't know why he has his own body now, but perhaps the Darkwalker isn't talented enough to put him back in mine."

Ah. Whoops.

A brief look of concern flits across Dorian's face. Even though Arthur's a prick, Dorian can at least be a little empathetic to the idea of someone dying. After all, he's done it enough that he knows it's never any fun.

"I'm sorry you died." And that at least, for one brief moment, is sincere. That sincerity lasts before Dorian points out, "But you think the Darkwalker brought us here? It hates us! Why would it bring in things it hates?"

For a brief, shining moment, it seems like Dorian might actually care.

And then he immediately starts bitching again and Arthur actually growls under his breath.

"'You are the Interloper. You are not part of nature’s design.'" It's a frustrated intonation, as he flips back to glare blearily at Dorian. "D'you seriously think that it brought us here to help, that its fucking cult was trying to do anything besides kill us not two months ago?" Both arms come up in a sharp gesture, flopping heavily back on the bed. "I don't know why it brought us here but it certainly wasn't to save us."

Re: for arthur, bodyswap event

brushoff - 2025-04-10 01:57 (UTC) - Expand