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

"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."

"Or, and here's a possibility, it's trying to kill us because it didn't bring us here," Dorian points out, like it's the most obvious thing in the world. "If you adopt a puppy, you don't go 'terribly sorry, I don't really want this dog' and then bash it's head in with a rock. I think it's far more likely that something else brought us here - the Aurora, that Enola girl, something else entirely, and the Darkwalker wants to kill us because of that. Because we are Interlopers, because we aren't supposed to be here."

He rolls his eyes before pointing out, "I think it's as aggravated by our being here as half of the people here are."

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

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