Tim's eyes narrow slightly as he winces at the un-breaking sounds, but that's his only response.
"He seems pretty thoroughly convinced you were done with him the moment he stopped being the Archivist," he says flatly. "After which you completely shit on one of the only actually selfish decisions he's ever made, because apparently you didn't ever fucking tell him that it might upset you."
"He's made plenty of selfish decisions before this one," Dorian points out, with a roll of his eyes. "Don't deify the man."
His nose fully healed, Dorian moves his hands to his pockets to get a fucking cigarette.
"But of course I didn't tell him. He had already made up his mind when he told me he was going to do it. Why would I shit on, now how did you phrase it, 'the only selfish decision he ever made?'"
Which, based on Dorian's tone, he disagrees with that assessment.
That gets a sharp bark of laughter, the kind that's all edges. "Oh, 'cos you've always been so sparing with your opinion on literally anything else in the past, haven't you?" Prick.
"But you know what?" He throws his arms out in a broad, violent gesture. "I'll play. I got stalked by Jon. I was there when he was falling to pieces, when he was so stupid as to break down the Not-Them's table with a fucking axe. He got me trapped in the fucking Distortion for weeks- he got me killed. All for his selfish reasons." He drops his arms with a dull slap against his sides. "And every single one of those, I have chewed his ear off about it. Because he deserves to know that I thought he was being a stupid fucking prick. Because even when I'm pissed and he doesn't want to hear it, my opinion matters."
Tim's still bristling, but the direct question makes him actually take stock, and he takes a long, deep breath to try and centre himself again.
Coming in with the punch like that was stupid, in retrospect.
"Because despite how much you seem to want to convince everyone it's true, you're not actually a fucking monster, Dorian," he says eventually; and his voice is genuinely softer, more sympathetic when he continues, "I remember the look on your face when you started dating him, Dorian. I know you love him. And I can't imagine you don't know how much you hurt him."
He does know. He knows he's hurt Jon because that's what he's best at. Because it's easier to hurt someone than to actually say the truth.
He takes another drag on the cigarette, exhaling smoke before,
"I didn't say anything because there was nothing useful to say. Because there's no way in hell I'd tell Jon part of the reason why I was interested in dating him in the first place was that I loved the Archivist parts of him. I'm not going to be the bastard to say that I'm going to miss what he had with the Eye."
"Maybe you should have." He's not mad or venomous this time. He's just tired. Compassionate, now, because he does still think of Dorian as a good friend, but. Tired. "Because then he'd know there's other parts of him that you care about besides that. I don't know if he doesn't think that's the only thing you loved about him, now."
And even he doesn't believe Dorian's actually that shallow.
"His self-loathing isn't my fault," Dorian points out, a bit rudely, but he doesn't really care right now.
"And anyway, what next? I reassure him, I apologize, I pretend that this whole thing doesn't give me the creeps just to make Jon happy. Because that's the only fucking reason you're here, isn't it. You want to make Jon happy."
He's going through that cigarette with the air of someone who done a lot of smoking recently. And already, Dorian's going to his pocket to get another. "And Dorian just has to be the big boy, put his own feelings aside, adjust, and make do. Like he always does."
"I'm not asking you to kiss and make up," he says, a bit more clipped. "And frankly I don't expect you to apologise, 'cos I don't actually think I can make you do anything you don't already want to."
He knows far too many stubborn arseholes and his place in relation to their choices.
"But you snapping at Jon because of your fucking issues is your problem. You not telling him earlier because you didn't think he'd listen, is. You getting shitty at someone, assuming the worst and then getting mad about being hurt by them because you didn't make a fucking effort to communicate that, is."
"I didn't think he wouldn't listen," Dorian retorts. "I knew. Do you know how he broke the news to me? He said he had a solution to not being human and then got pissy at me when I guessed wrong."
He shakes his head before asking, "Did he ask you for your input? I'm guessing no-hell, he hasn't even made a fucking network post about this."
"He told me by showing up to my door as a wolf and flattening me," he points out flatly. Never mind that Iris spoiled the surprise, that had still been jarring as hell.
"So he didn't ask me, no. He didn't even tell me he was considering it, even before he got the actual deal. But I spent the entire year on Flotilla with Lark and the pack, so he at least had some idea of how I might react. Because- yes, alright, I'll gladly admit Jon is constantly jumping headfirst into new things without thinking," he adds, readily. "I'm not an idiot, I know far better than you that he's not fucking perfect. But even if you hate it, especially if you hate it, you've got to fucking tell him that. Before it turns into this."
With a sharp, expansive gesture at this whole situation.
"Ooh, lucky you, I spent my entire time in Flotilla in jail," he bluntly points out. "With someone I love who, coincidentally, got fucked over by the very same pack dynamics you all are so quick to defend."
Dorian shakes his head before lighting up a second cigarette, just blatantly chain smoking now.
"But fine. I'll tell him that I miss the old Jon and don't like what he's become and everybody gets to go on their merry way. I'll be the monster you say I'm not and break his heart. Is that what you want?"
He lifts a hand to rub his face. "I just want you to use your fucking words, Dorian. Without going straight for the throat because it's easier than telling him he upset you. Dragging him down doesn't make you happier, it just makes you both more miserable, and I know you're smarter than that."
He rubs his hands briefly, fiddling uncertainly for a moment before he plows on.
"I'm not gonna apologise for punching you, because I did warn you about that one," he points out. "But I did come at this... strong. And stupid." He sighs again, more gently this time. "I don't hate you, Dorian. I want to keep being your friend, and you know I don't give a shit what Jon thinks about that. But-- I dunno." Everything else is just gonna sound like a guilt trip now, even with his more even tones. "You're not a fucking monster. Don't act like one. That's just being lazy, and not in the fun hedonistic way."
Dorian stands his ground, partly because he does not want to show weakness, partly because he's trying his hardest not to let out a scoff at that monster comment. He is a monster. It's just that everybody else refuses to realize it. So he takes that moment to take in what Tim's saying before he continues with,
"You know, I almost was a werewolf once," he points out. "True story. I was mauled by one in Iceland, back in 2009. For whatever reason, it took my portrait a while to work the lycanthropy out of it's system."
He takes a pause, mostly to take a drag on his cigarette before continuing with, "It changes you, Tim. More than just going feral every full moon and shedding on your couch, it changes your personality. It's already changed Jon—and don't say it hasn't, I saw him at port. And we're supposed to just be fine with that."
"You've always known him as miserable," he corrects - and it's gentle, again, because there's no way Dorian could have known any different. "It's not like you, Dorian, or half the bloody vampires in this place. Jon didn't choose it, he didn't want it. He made the best of a situation that he was tricked and forced into - and when I died, he still didn't even fully know what was happening to him. Being the Archivist is the culmination of literally every shitty thing that ever happened to him working in the Archives."
There's a pause. Dorian takes another drag of his cigarette because wow, was that supposed to make him feel better? It doesn't! It makes him feel like garbage! And makes him even more convinced that this probably won't work out, if it was just the depressed, traumatized Jon that Dorian fell for.
Though there is one thing that Dorian will correct Tim on. He shakes his head slightly before pointing out, "And yet I think he wants to be the Archivist more than you realize."
For someone who supposedly didn't want to be in that situation, Jon sure as hell made a series of choices to further dive down into it. You know where's a good place for someone who's trying not to feed an eldritch entity based on a desire for knowledge to work? Literally any place that isn't the library.
"Other way around," Tim comments dryly. "He wouldn't have been such a good Archivist if he wasn't already like that. Jonathan Sims is, before any other thing, a big fucking nerd. I met him in Research, where he'd already been for years. That part of him that's a busybody that wants to know everything, all the time, forever? That was already very real."
"That doesn't change the fact that he still did things that suggested he was slightly buying what the Eye was selling." Dorian points to himself with the hand that isn't holding a cigarette as he continues to talk, "If you want to fuck over the Ceaseless Watcher? Don't make friends with a blatant narcissist who's a supernatural buffet. I liked what he did as the Archivist and he knew it. So no, don't tell me that being the Archivist was the worst thing ever and poor Jon was just miserable all the time when he ran to me with open arms."
"'cos what do I know about supernatural bullshit, right?" He's trying not to get pissed but the dismissal is frustrating. "It's not like I didn't give him a statement about being an avatar of the End from one of the earliest floods I ever had. About how I know what it's like leaning into your entity and finding ways to please it. That I'm not the one who fucking told Jon to find ways to feed the Eye that didn't mean sacrificing himself."
He points at Dorian in a sharp jab. "And don't you dare try some pity-me ploy about how he didn't love you if he was willing to feed you to the Eye, because I know he would have fought you tooth and nail before he'd even consider letting you do that for him."
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"He seems pretty thoroughly convinced you were done with him the moment he stopped being the Archivist," he says flatly. "After which you completely shit on one of the only actually selfish decisions he's ever made, because apparently you didn't ever fucking tell him that it might upset you."
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His nose fully healed, Dorian moves his hands to his pockets to get a fucking cigarette.
"But of course I didn't tell him. He had already made up his mind when he told me he was going to do it. Why would I shit on, now how did you phrase it, 'the only selfish decision he ever made?'"
Which, based on Dorian's tone, he disagrees with that assessment.
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"But you know what?" He throws his arms out in a broad, violent gesture. "I'll play. I got stalked by Jon. I was there when he was falling to pieces, when he was so stupid as to break down the Not-Them's table with a fucking axe. He got me trapped in the fucking Distortion for weeks- he got me killed. All for his selfish reasons." He drops his arms with a dull slap against his sides. "And every single one of those, I have chewed his ear off about it. Because he deserves to know that I thought he was being a stupid fucking prick. Because even when I'm pissed and he doesn't want to hear it, my opinion matters."
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Dorian lights the cigarette and takes a long drag from it. He exhales then immediately takes another drag.
"Why are you even here? Just to yell at me? Well congratulations, you've done that."
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Coming in with the punch like that was stupid, in retrospect.
"Because despite how much you seem to want to convince everyone it's true, you're not actually a fucking monster, Dorian," he says eventually; and his voice is genuinely softer, more sympathetic when he continues, "I remember the look on your face when you started dating him, Dorian. I know you love him. And I can't imagine you don't know how much you hurt him."
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He takes another drag on the cigarette, exhaling smoke before,
"I didn't say anything because there was nothing useful to say. Because there's no way in hell I'd tell Jon part of the reason why I was interested in dating him in the first place was that I loved the Archivist parts of him. I'm not going to be the bastard to say that I'm going to miss what he had with the Eye."
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And even he doesn't believe Dorian's actually that shallow.
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"And anyway, what next? I reassure him, I apologize, I pretend that this whole thing doesn't give me the creeps just to make Jon happy. Because that's the only fucking reason you're here, isn't it. You want to make Jon happy."
He's going through that cigarette with the air of someone who done a lot of smoking recently. And already, Dorian's going to his pocket to get another. "And Dorian just has to be the big boy, put his own feelings aside, adjust, and make do. Like he always does."
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He knows far too many stubborn arseholes and his place in relation to their choices.
"But you snapping at Jon because of your fucking issues is your problem. You not telling him earlier because you didn't think he'd listen, is. You getting shitty at someone, assuming the worst and then getting mad about being hurt by them because you didn't make a fucking effort to communicate that, is."
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He shakes his head before asking, "Did he ask you for your input? I'm guessing no-hell, he hasn't even made a fucking network post about this."
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"So he didn't ask me, no. He didn't even tell me he was considering it, even before he got the actual deal. But I spent the entire year on Flotilla with Lark and the pack, so he at least had some idea of how I might react. Because- yes, alright, I'll gladly admit Jon is constantly jumping headfirst into new things without thinking," he adds, readily. "I'm not an idiot, I know far better than you that he's not fucking perfect. But even if you hate it, especially if you hate it, you've got to fucking tell him that. Before it turns into this."
With a sharp, expansive gesture at this whole situation.
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Dorian shakes his head before lighting up a second cigarette, just blatantly chain smoking now.
"But fine. I'll tell him that I miss the old Jon and don't like what he's become and everybody gets to go on their merry way. I'll be the monster you say I'm not and break his heart. Is that what you want?"
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"Fair enough."
He rubs his hands briefly, fiddling uncertainly for a moment before he plows on.
"I'm not gonna apologise for punching you, because I did warn you about that one," he points out. "But I did come at this... strong. And stupid." He sighs again, more gently this time. "I don't hate you, Dorian. I want to keep being your friend, and you know I don't give a shit what Jon thinks about that. But-- I dunno." Everything else is just gonna sound like a guilt trip now, even with his more even tones. "You're not a fucking monster. Don't act like one. That's just being lazy, and not in the fun hedonistic way."
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"You know, I almost was a werewolf once," he points out. "True story. I was mauled by one in Iceland, back in 2009. For whatever reason, it took my portrait a while to work the lycanthropy out of it's system."
He takes a pause, mostly to take a drag on his cigarette before continuing with, "It changes you, Tim. More than just going feral every full moon and shedding on your couch, it changes your personality. It's already changed Jon—and don't say it hasn't, I saw him at port. And we're supposed to just be fine with that."
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"You never met him before he was spooky, did you? He told me he first came here not long before the Unknowing."
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Though there is one thing that Dorian will correct Tim on. He shakes his head slightly before pointing out, "And yet I think he wants to be the Archivist more than you realize."
For someone who supposedly didn't want to be in that situation, Jon sure as hell made a series of choices to further dive down into it. You know where's a good place for someone who's trying not to feed an eldritch entity based on a desire for knowledge to work? Literally any place that isn't the library.
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He points at Dorian in a sharp jab. "And don't you dare try some pity-me ploy about how he didn't love you if he was willing to feed you to the Eye, because I know he would have fought you tooth and nail before he'd even consider letting you do that for him."
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