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He’s not surprised to find Orym sitting awake in the room when he gets back to the Spire By Fire. He’s not surprised, but he’s not exactly happy about it either.
Dorian slips the key in the lock as quietly as he can with the vague hope that everyone in the room is asleep. But when he pushes the door open, he’s met with the sight of Orym sitting stock-still, staring at the door with a kind of quiet determination that makes Dorian’s stomach sink. For a split second, he considers turning tail and running, but— he’s going to have to face the music eventually.
“You’re awake,” he says pointlessly as the door clicks shut behind him. “You didn’t have to wait up.”
“I figured someone should be awake in case you called for help,” Orym says lightly, holding up the sending stone so it catches the light of the dying fire.
I gave the stone to Cyrus, Dorian thinks, but the truth doesn’t even make it far enough to die on his tongue. So much fucking truth tonight, Dorian’s truthed out. Orym’s watching him, an indiscernible look on his face— or maybe it would be discernible to someone else, and Dorian just doesn’t have the insight to read it. It sends a familiar trickle of guilt down to his stomach, and he turns away, can’t fucking watch this backslide in their friendship happen head on. Because he’s a coward— always has been, always will be.
Orym’s sitting in the only chair in the room, and Fearne’s snoring lightly on the bed, so Dorian’s left little do but pace over to the wall near the mantle. He leans against it and starts taking off his bracers, just to have something to do with his hands. He knows— knows from experience— that Orym can and will just sit there and watch him in distrustful silence if he feels it’s warranted, and Dorian can’t stand it, all of a sudden. It’s been the longest, most miserable day in a long time, and Dorian is full-up on complicated feelings at the moment. He’s got no space left for whatever this is.
“Do you want me to get my own room?” Dorian asks tightly, still avoiding eye contact. He could afford it— he’s not so well off himself that he can afford to go throwing around ten platinum every day indefinitely, but he could manage on his own. That’d been the plan initially, after all. Manage on his own and keep his distance, avoid getting tangled up with other people who’d ask awkward questions.
Well, he’s sure fucked that one right to Avernus and back, hasn’t he?
“No, I don’t want that,” Orym says, in that steady, calm, even voice of his. Like he’s not the kind of person who’d rush broken-and-bleeding into the grip of walking horror disguised as a wall, like he’s the reasonable one. Gods, he probably is. “I thought we could talk, that’s all.”
“I’m not sure what’s left to say,” Dorian says— another evasion— but Orym’s just— looking at him, steady and unflinching, and it makes anxiety jitter through Dorian’s body. His fingers ache for strings to pluck, if only to have somewhere to put that restlessness.
“Are you okay?”
Of all the things he’d expected Orym to say, that— wasn’t one of them. Dorian blinks. Is he okay? Of course not, but he can’t tell the truth, and he can’t lie. “Why wouldn’t I be?”
“I can think of about 4 reasons off the top of my head,” Orym says casually, adjusting his posture in the chair, bringing one heel up and looping his arm around his knee. It does, at least, make him seem less like a guard carrying out an interrogation. “Let’s start with ‘you almost got killed by a wall.’ Somehow, that’s the least loaded one.”
Gods. The worst fucking day. “I’m okay, Letters got me, and we had some time to catch our breath.” Orym nods, and Dorian surreptitiously scans his frame again, looking this time for points of hurt rather than body language. “You’re alright? You got pretty beat up too.”
“Yeah, Fearne, uh— emptied her energy reserves, if you will, healing me before bed.”
“Good,” Dorian replies, for lack of anything better to say, and an uncomfortable silence settles on them again. The weight of everything he’s never said hangs over them, like a physical burden, dragging him down, and Dorian lets it pull him down, sinking to sit on the floor. Looking at the scuffed up toes of his boots, caked on the sides with muck and mud and blood, he says, “I’m sorry I didn’t tell you.”
Orym hums a little bit, thoughtfully. “I don’t think you are. I think you’re just sorry it came out.”
Dorian flinches, because, somehow, even knowing nothing about where he came from, Orym still knows him too fucking well. “If it helps, I didn’t— I wasn’t thinking of it as lying.” Because I can’t fucking lie, can’t tell the truth.
“Believe it or not—” Orym starts, and there’s a resignation to his voice now that makes Dorian want to curl up and hide, “— I do actually understand the concept of wanting a fresh start. You told us you were Dorian because you were trying to be Dorian. I can put that much together for myself.”
“Then what else do you expect me to say?” Dorian asks, and hates how small and plaintive his voice sounds.
He’s still looking at his boots, so he only hears it when Orym hops out of the chair, doesn’t see it until his feet come into view. His boots are off, so he’s barefoot on the wood floor in just his pants and the light shirt he wears under his armor. Orym’s hand falls to rest on one of Dorian’s knee, and Dorian looks up to meet his eyes. They’re nearly of a height like this, with Dorian slumped over, and it’s— reassuring, somehow. Orym always seems so much bigger than he actually is.
“I don’t expect anything from you,” Orym says, and there’s a surprising gentleness to his voice. “I just thought you might want to talk. You’re my friend, you went through a lot of shit today. I thought it might have dragged up some unpleasantness. People don’t usually leave home like that unless there’s something they’re trying to get away from.”
It’s a gentle reminder, of course, that Dorian’s not the only one with unspoken truths between them. He’s got an idea of what Orym’s trying to get away from, but he’s never asked, and Orym never said. Whatever— whoever— Orym lost remained unspoken through their whole time in Zephrah, but Dorian’s smart too. He can put things together: the bed in Orym’s humble home that was much too long for a halfling alone, the way The Voice of The Tempest treated this mission like it might be something personal to Orym. Zephrah was wonderful and kind and welcome, diverse and alive, and people didn’t leave a home like that unless they were trying to get away from something.
But he never asked, because he didn’t want to be asked in return.
Gods, he’s been a horrible friend.
“What I said earlier is true. I am the second son,” he says, and the remainder of truth is slipping from him before can reign it in. “There were two things I was meant to do with my life: stay alive until Cyrus managed to pop out an heir, and— marry advantageously. It never mattered what I might want my life to be, or who I might want to share it with, because I owed a duty to my family, and that was to ensure our strength. To, ideally, bring an air genasi with power and influence into the fold, to keep her experience and connections with us. And it would always have to be a woman, because— well I guess that was my third duty. To have an heir myself.”
“When the others asked you if you were betrothed, you said ‘not technically’... that’s what you meant?”
“Yes,” Dorian sighs, looking up into Orym’s face for the first time. “There wasn’t a specific woman — yet — but there would be. They just had to make a match for Cyrus first.”
“And you don’t like women?” Orym asks, like he’s just getting all the facts straight, and it’s so Orym that it makes Dorian laugh.
“I don’t know what I like,” he says, dropping his head back against the wall. “That’s kind of the problem. I never had a chance to figure it out. Any time I tried to, to, to— explore any part of myself I’d be dragged into the audience chamber and tied down in a fucking Zone of Truth until they got what I’d done out of me so I could be punished accordingly. And any man or woman who dared to touch one of the rising sons of the Silken Squall surely would have been punished worse.”
Orym’s hand on Dorian’s knee tightens in response, and Dorian finds he’s grateful for it, its grounding steadiness. “That’s terrible,” Orym says, and it might sound condescending from someone else, but Orym does gravitas better than anyone Dorian knows.
“It was my life,” Dorian says, dully, feeling tension drain from him like a plug has been pulled. Truth, now spoken. “I was 26 years old before I saw a person who wasn’t an air genasi. Before I played music in front of people for the joy of it, rather than as— some kind of demonstration of my cultured and refined upbringing, to show what a good match I could be. And do you know what the worst part of it is?”
“Tell me,” Orym says, voice all empathy, and it makes something inside Dorian crack open.
“I still miss them.” His voice breaks, and he closes his eyes, pretending not to notice how it pushes tears out to wet his cheeks. “My mother and father. My first thought when I saw Cyrus was who was going to be looking after them— which is ridiculous, they have a whole retinue of people to look after them. But I knew when I left that it would hurt them, and I only managed to do it because I convinced myself I mattered less than Cyrus. Like I wasn’t still their son, somehow. But they’re my parents, Orym. They’re my parents.”
“I understand,” Orym says, and Dorian’s surprised to find that he believes him. Then Orym’s hand squeezes on Dorian’s knee again as he asks, softly, “Is it alright if I touch you?”
Dorian nods mutely, can’t make himself open his eyes as Orym shifts in, arms wrapping around Dorian’s shoulders, pulling him close until Dorian’s forehead is resting against the curve of Orym’s neck. He’s got to be standing with his feet on either side of Dorian’s hips to make this work, but it does work. The ease of it is another reminder, that Orym’s got experience navigating the fitting together of bodies that Dorian doesn’t have, that he’s used to giving comfort to someone bigger. But like this, Orym doesn’t feel small at all— he feels as solid as stone, the foundation on which Dorian’s building his new life.
“I don’t know what it’s like to grow up having to shut away parts of yourself,” Orym starts, his fingers weaving into Dorian’s hair, scratching gently at the nape of his neck and sending shivers down his spine. “I knew I preferred men before I came of age, and where I'm from that was a much less remarkable thing about me than the fact that I never took to magic. But even then, there were people to encourage me to find my strengths. I’m sorry you never had that. I think it’s alright to be angry at people who punished you for wanting to know yourself, but— I think it’s okay to grieve for your family, too.”
“They’re not gone—”
“But they couldn’t love you the way you deserve. Unconditionally, without expectation.”
“No one can do that, Orym,” Dorian says, pulling back finally to meet his gaze. His green eyes are colored hazel by the firelight, and something in Dorian’s chest aches. Bards all over the world sing of heartache, but no one says it feels like this. “Unconditional love is a fairy tale.”
“Maybe.” There’s a melancholy twist to Orym’s mouth, but he’s as serious as he’s been all along when he says, “You still deserved better than you got.”
Dorian can’t respond to that, can’t even look at it, feels the need to shy away from the idea, like looking at the sun. Instead, he says, “Will you tell me about them sometime? Whoever you loved and lost?” Orym blinks, surprised, like he hadn’t realized he was showing as much as he was, and Dorian rushes to add, “It doesn’t have to be now, I think probably I’ll listen better if it’s not now, but— you know. I want to know.”
“Yeah, I think I owe you that much,” Orym says, humorously resigned, but Dorian shakes his head. Cautiously, he brings up a hand to settle on Oyrm’s side, feeling the expanse of his lean torso through the thin material of his shirt.
“No debts between us,” he says again, firmly, thumb rubbing back and forth against the linen fabric under his fingertips. “You owe me nothing, my friend.”
“Maybe I’d like to owe you something.” Orym tilts his head, looking thoughtful, and Dorian’s stomach flutters. “You clear debts when you’re trying to stay apart from everyone. I don’t think I want you apart from me. Every time you’re out of my line of sight I feel like I’m going crazy.” He shakes his head, and Dorian thinks of the statue-still way Orym had been sitting when Dorian got back to the room. “You’re right, I lost someone. I spent a long time keeping myself far enough away from people that I wouldn’t have to go through that again. But that kind of distance... Maybe it keeps you safe, but it makes you cold, too. I didn’t realize until everything went down with Opal and Ted how much I missed having people close to me.”
“I could tell,” Dorian says, and even though they’ve been sleeping in a pile together for months, he feels like he’s never been as physically close to someone in his life as he is at this moment. His skin feels alive, he can’t stop being aware of the heat of Orym’s body, of everywhere Orym’s touching him. “You changed, after everything. I thought it was just about the Circlet, that the worst had already happened so you gave up worrying about it.”
“I’m still worried about it,” Orym admits, giving Dorian a wry little smile. “I think I understand a little better now why you wanted to keep it with us, though. When you’re raised to be the person other people come to for answers, I can imagine that tends to make you assume you’re the best one to handle a problem.”
“I hated fighting with you about it.” Dorian drops his head down a little, a ghost of old shame sneaking in. “I just— wanted you to like me. I hated feeling like you didn’t trust me. I was— so worried, when I saw Cyrus earlier, that I’d lose your trust all over again.”
“It’s different,” Orym says, reaching up to stroke his thumb against Dorian’s cheek, gentle brush against skin. And, gods, being touched, Dorian feels lightheaded. “Just— don’t keep important things happening right now from me. I can’t help if I don’t know what’s happening.”
“I was going to keep him a secret. Cyrus. I was going to try to handle it on my own, and about that I truly am sorry. I just— felt like I’d dug the hole too deep, at that point. I couldn’t tell you what was going on without all of these other pieces spilling out.”
“I’m glad to know you better now,” Orym says, and when Dorian looks up, his mouth is quirked— a pretty pink bow that curls up at the corner, soft and sweet looking, like the petals of the flower he’d grown in Dorian’s hair. He only realizes he’s staring when Orym clears his throat, and takes his hand away. Heat rises on Dorian’s face, humiliation rather than excitement, but Orym speaks before he can say anything. “You’ve had a hell of a day, and you’re feeling really vulnerable right now, so I don’t want to take advantage of you, but sometime maybe we could—”
“Kiss me,” Dorian inturpts, fuck, nearly begs, fisting his hands in Orym’s loose shirt with an edge of desperation. “Gods, please, kiss me. If you want to, I want you to, I want— I want to actually have lived some of this life before it gets taken away. Please.”
“No one’s taking you away from me,” Orym says firmly, an edge of flint and steel in his voice, but his hand is soft when it comes back up to curl around Dorian’s jaw. The touch feels like magic, literal magic, the way casting makes all of Dorian’s nerve-endings thrum. “You’ve never done this before?”
Dorian shakes his head, but he doesn’t have time to feel embarrassed about it, because it’s Orym. He just wants all the facts so he can figure out the best course of action. In this case, the best course of action seems to be Orym pressing up on his toes so he gains a scant few inches of height on Dorian, so he can tilt Dorian’s face up to meet his. His breath is warm against Dorian’s face, nuzzling their noses together sweetly before finally closing the distance, pressing mouth to hungry mouth.
Hundreds of times Dorian’s imagined being kissed in his life, and all of it is forgotten the moment their lips touch. It’s— in some ways it’s simpler than he could have guessed, just sensitive skin sliding against sensitive skin, but it’s also— It’s Orym, and all of his care and concentration distilled down to this single action. Dorian forgets to be self-conscious about his nose or what to do with his hands when Orym catches his lower lip and licks against it, a slip of hot, sweet sensation that makes Dorian shiver down to his muddy boots. Orym pushes in closer, the hand that’s been curled in Dorian’s hair scratching lightly against his scalp, and Dorian forgets to breathe, doesn’t need breath when he can have this, can arch up and press his open, needy mouth to Orym’s.
Tentative, Dorian slides his hand up, feeling the structure of Orym’s body under his palm, the ridges of bone and wiry muscle, until his fingers meet warm skin where Orym’s shirt opens low under his collarbones. Soft skin, so warm, Dorian’s head is spinning, and when he rubs finger tips against the column of Orym’s neck, he can feel the full-body shiver in response, the buzz of an inaudibly low moan against his lips. And gods, he did that. He drew that sound from Orym, with just his hands and his mouth, and that makes him feel so powerful and so vulnerable he can barely comprehend it. Orym’s weight shifts, head tilting to give Dorian’s hand more access, and it brings their bodies together. The pointed metal tips of Dorian's breastplate must be digging into Orym's tender skin, but Orym doesn’t withdraw for longer than to gasp in a breath. Dorian can feel the motion of Orym’s throat as he swallows under his fingers, inviting, enticing... oh all the things people can do together, Dorian’s heard stories, but he’s never—
The sound of shifting from the bed on the side of the room startles them, and they break apart. Orym’s keen gaze flicks immediately over to where Fearne’s sprawling out on the center of the bed, but Dorian can’t look anywhere but at Orym. His mouth is stained a lush dark pink, shades darker than the flush brushed across his cheekbones and the tips of his ears. Dorian wants to put his mouth there, and on the slender column of Orym’s throat, and anywhere else he might want it to be. But Orym’s stepping back a bit, rubbing his neck sheepishly, like a kid caught sneaking sweets.
“I forgot she was here,” he admits, eyes flicking up to Dorian’s. “I mean— not quite, but I didn’t really think about it.”
“I think I like you not thinking,” Dorian says, thoughtlessly, and Orym laughs. He’s handsome when he smiles, Dorian thinks, and all the rest of the time besides. But the smiles are nice.
“One of us has to,” Orym says, and it could be a barb, except he sounds so affectionate when he says it that Dorian can’t possibly let his feelings be hurt by it. “Come on— you should get out of your armor and get cleaned up. It’s got to be bothering you to be this filthy.”
It is, in point of fact, but after several days of being teased for being so clean, he’d thought maybe he’d try to get used to it. But Orym’s already turning his attention to the buckles on Dorian’s breastplate, clever soldier’s hands working the straps with sure efficiency, and Dorian’s not about to protest Orym undressing him. Not after a kiss like that.
“Maybe we can get our own room tomorrow,” Dorian says, and when Orym freezes and looks up at him, he panics and rushes on to say, “Just, we can afford it now, and there’s no reason all three of us need to squish into one bed. You know what, never mind, forget I said anything about—”
“You have to be the one to tell her she doesn’t get to watch us fuck,” Orym says, and the note of teasing in his voice is honestly the best thing Dorian’s heard all week. “Because I’m pretty sure that’s an insult where she comes from.”
“Sure, give me the shitty jobs.”
“Absolutely, your majesty,” Orym says, the first time he’s gotten in on the teasing all day. The sting is somewhat lessened by the kiss he presses to Dorian’s mouth, slow and lingering. “Go and get cleaned up, I’ll herd her back onto her side of the bed.”
The Spire By Fire doesn’t have much to offer in the way of cleanliness besides a basin in the washroom. But the water is clean and fresh, and between that and some carefully aimed Prestidigitation, the grime of the day disappears from Dorian’s skin and clothes. He takes extra care with his hair, carefully combing out the blood and wall-gunk sticking the strands together, thinking all the while how it felt to have Orym’s fingers carding through it. Hoping quietly to himself that he’ll get to feel it again.
The room is dark by the time he returns, boots and armor held in one hand. The fire is banked low, and the only other light comes from where Mister is snoring by Fearne’s feat, open mouth glowing like an ember. Orym’s settled in the middle of the bed as he has been for the last month, an obvious Dorian-shaped space left next to him. It takes but a moment to leave his breastplate and boots next to Orym’s leathers, and then he’s slipping into the bed, into the familiar comfort of breaths and bodies.
“Hi,” Orym says quietly in the dark, and Dorian can feel his hand come up to grip the front of Dorian’s tunic. Carefully, he lays his hand over Orym’s, and feels him relax in increments.
“Sleep,” Dorian murmurs, heart beating wildly in his chest, and the instruction is as much for himself as it is for Orym.
“Yeah,” comes the response, already heavy with exhaustion, and Dorian squeezes his hand gently.
He expects sleep to be long-coming, all of the events of the day clattering around in his brain, but his body is feeling the exhaustion as much as Orym is. He’s just dozing off when it occurs to him that he never actually mentioned giving Cyrus the second sending stone. It hits with a little wave of guilt, and he opens his eyes to try to get a look at Orym’s face in the dark. He can just make him out in the dim light, his closed eyes fanning eyelashes out against his cheeks and mouth slightly open. “Orym?” Dorian whispers, but Orym doesn’t stir.
Well. No point in waking him, Dorian figures. They can cross that bridge when they come to it.