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"Then I suppose you must hate me, Herr Gray, because this ends when I am gone."

He leans back on his hands. Melancholy is a relatively new emotion for him, but this place has beat into him that he cannot simply escape. He feels like a caged animal, resigned to his fate, having paced himself into exhaustion.

"This ends when you graduate." When Dorian looks at Johann, he's looking at him with absolute determination, a steely glare. But when he speaks, it's with absolute certainty.

"That's not running away. That's making a choice." There's a moment when he sighs. "You're smart, Johann. You're smart, crafty, and if I'm guessing correctly? Right now you hate yourself more than anybody else in the Barge. So what are you going to do with that hate? How are you going to direct it?"

"By going off and doing another killing spree," he sayswers with some of that old sarcasm in his tone.

"I should revisit all the classics. All the ones I killed before. That kid shouldn't be the only one."

"You haven't killed me yet," Dorian points out, tossing that sarcasm right back at Johann. "I'd prefer if if you weren't boring."

"You can't be killed," he retorts, picking up a rock and throwing it at him.

"Or I would drown you right now."

Dorian attempts to bat the rock away. He looks over Johann, thinking things over, before,

"There's a portrait in my attic. That portrait is intrinsically tied to my existence. Destroy it and you destroy me. I can be killed. But because it's in such a specific way, I prefer to let others believe that nothing will take."

"Then I'll remember that next time you annoy me."

He's quiet for a long time, then pushes himself up. "Can I stay with you for a while?"

"You can stay with me as long as you like," Dorian says, with a nod. Johann'll have to see Florian again. He knows that much and he knows that Johann knows that much. But at the moment? They can push it away for just a little bit.

There's a pause before, "By the way, I'm sure that once news about your murders gets out, people will be bothering me about punishing you. But honestly? I think you're being punished enough right now."

"How fortunate for me," he says with a roll of his eyes. He starts for the door.

He just wants to flop on Dorian's couch for a while.

And Dorian follows, perfectly content to let his troublesome kid flop on his couch for however long he wants. Johann certainly needs it.

After Johann meets with Florian, after it all happens, he bursts into Dorian's cabin in a panic, catching his breath by the door. He looks absolutely wild, something frantic in his eyes.

Dorian, who's lighting up a cigarette, looks over at Johann with a little frown. This is...unexpected. Normally he's not the type to be frantic like this. "What's wrong?"

He just looks at Dorian, a bit bewildered. "I can't touch him," he says and then laughs. The sound is bitter. "That fucker. Fuck him and his stupid commands. I wasn't going to get stuck there for two fucking hours this time. Just because he's throwing a tantrum."

"Wait, back it up a bit," Dorian says, as he takes a puff on his cigarette. "He ordered you to not touch him. Because of your weird Hallenkind everything, now you literally can't touch him?"

"Yes," he says because he can't think of any other way to describe it. "It's only happened once before. But I knew what to expect this time."

Dorian can't help but frown at that. Oh he's got mixed feelings on Florian too begin with, but now?

"That bastard," he grumbles, reaching into his pockets to pull the cigarettes out again. Johann probably needs one as well. "What a petty nightmare. Oh, I understand being mad, but you don't fuck someone over like that!"

"He didn't know," he says, quick to defend. But he does take a cigarette, lighting it with a flick of his finger.

"He didn't?" Dorian pauses before pointing out, "Shouldn't we tell him that?"

He shakily takes a drag of the cigarette, rubbing the bridge of his nose.

"I don't know. I don't want him to do it again."

Dorian sighs, taking a deep breath before, "You know, if he doesn't know that he can even do this in the first place, he's going to do it again."

So yeah, they're gonna have to tell Florian about this.

He groans. "Let me enjoy this first. He doesn't want me around. He didn't want to talk to me unless I told him what exactly I had done wrong, so - we wait."

"I mean, I've got a good idea of what Florian thinks you might have done wrong," Dorian points out. "But if you want to hang out over here, drink margaritas for a week, and make him sweat, I'm fine with that."

A pause before, "Though I will be stealing you for a few more Enclosure dates."

"He won't care. He'll take it as abandonment if I don't see him. But - for right now? I need to - do fuck all."

He flops down onto the couch with his cigarette.

"He'll take it as abandonment because both of you are needlessly dramatic," says the person who's also needlessly dramatic.

"Want some margaritas after we finish our cigarettes?"

"Can I just have the tequila?" he mutters, saying nothing about dramatics. Of course they're dramatic. He's never claimed anything else.

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brushoff - 2023-08-13 19:39 (UTC) - Expand