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

Dorian's not an idiot. He won't use up all his cocaine on one trip. He'll ration it out! There's enough for...mmm, five or six highs? Possibly more, if he doesn't go to excess, a valid possibility considering that it's him. Trip number two, baby!

Which ends up very much the same as the first. Dorian, outside, in the street, looking at something. Though instead of staring at the sky, this time he's staring at his hands.

Are his cuticles getting chapped? Can cuticles get chapped to begin with? He can see every vein, every molecule, every atom in his hands, and they're...dying. Odd. His hands shouldn't be doing that. His hands also shouldn't be the sort of grayish color that Dorian is hallucinating them as, but that's something to deal with later.

So sorry Chloe: there's this dumbass in the middle of the road, looking at his hands.

Chloe used to hardly spend any time in town, but now that she delivers food a few places, she sometimes encounters weird things. Like a guy standing in the street staring at his hands. Fucking Christ, this had better not be mushrooms again.

“Hey dude, you good?”

Oh. Shit. Someone's talking to him. Dorian blinks slightly before looking over at Chloe.

"I think so?" There's a moment before Dorian lets out a small little giggle. "Actually, nah, probably not." He leans in to whisper, in a very audible whisper, "I might have done a tiny little bit of cocaine."

Where the fuck did someone get cocaine?!

Chloe sighs heavily.

“New guy, huh?” Typical. “You should use that shit sparingly, you can't get any more until Christmas.”

Maybe don't ask her more about that until you're sober.

“Are you living at the town hall, or did you pick out a house? You should get out of the street.”

"I'm living at the church! I'm the new rector." There's a pause before, "Or whatever you call the person who does the upkeep. Wouldn't know, I haven't been to church in decades."

Says the man who looks in his early twenties at the most.

"But that's the thing about churches—they're good, solid strong buildings. Buildings that people are attached to and might give you a teeny tiny bit of help in maintaining."

Plus, he's doing it for the bit.

"No way in hell I'd live at the town hall. There's no privacy! And all those people, urgh."

“Right, it's awful.” Chloe hasn't spent even one night in that place and it seems like a better decision every day.

“You should probably know, though, that the Darkwalker killed like, four people in there. The church.”

Once again, there's people talking about the fucking Darkwalker. Once again, Dorian knows he's going to get absolutely no new information from this.

"You know, I know next to nothing about this Darkwalker. All the things that everyone has told me about it are fucking useless. Oooh, big scary monster that kills people and leaves behind their empty, terrified shells, do you know how little that narrows it down? I can think of at least five things off the top of my head that have the same effect!"

Chloe rolls her eyes.

“And what, you've got a taxonomy guide to three-headed wolf gods who drool green shit everywhere back in your little churchmouse hidey hole? This probably isn't anything you know what it is, anyway.”

"I've got a taxonomy guide to gods," Dorian points out. "I met one, once. Helped save her from a troll."

Which is a completely normal sentence that Dorian will absolutely regret saying once he's sober. But now, as he's still having a trip on cocaine, he looks up at the Aurora and can't help but let out a bright little laugh.

"God, I don't know why I was so resistant! I feel fantastic, this was absolutely the right decision." A pause before, "We should go dancing. Where can you go dancing here? Can you even go dancing in the frozen hellscape to begin with?"

Okay, yes sometimes magic is real, but a god who can be threatened by trolls of all things doesn't seem that impressive.

Before she can argue, though, he continues.

“Sometimes people throw parties, I guess. And if you're really into classical violin there used to be a kid who played at the hall sometimes? A guy used to do metal concerts on aurora nights, but he got got a while ago.”

Dorian wrinkles his nose like he smelled something horrible before pointing out,

"You can't dance to metal. Have you seen a metal concert? It's just long-haired, unwashed rockers jumping in place."

Dorian says the word 'rockers' like it's absolutely scummy. There's a moment before he muses, "My band at least could play music you could dance to."

“I’ve seen lots of things. Metal was never my scene, but beggars can't really be choosers in a town this size.”

They're lucky they have any music at all.

“Your band? Anyone I've heard of?”

"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."

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.”

"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!

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

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

A pause.

A frown.

A once-over.

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

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

"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!"

“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.

"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!"

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!

"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.

“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.”

"Did he deserve it?"

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

closed to chloe, cw: drug use

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