Chapter Text
It isn’t like Dorian had been having, like, a great day or anything—he’s had better; gods has he had better—but bleeding out in magical darkness from a wound bestowed upon him by a supposed ally while the rest of the party stumbles and trips and fires spells and just generally causes a fucking scene only for their target to have gotten away in the middle of it all isn’t, like, really improving his mood by any stretch.
“Dorian!” He flinches on instinct, skirting away from the boom of Bertrand’s voice as the darkness gradually begins to clear and the old man lumbers into view. Dorian’s handprint is still bright red across his face, but he’s smiling all the same—fists propped up on his hips, damnable gambling sword stowed away like it definitely isn’t covered in Dorian’s own blood. “Can you hear my voice?”
“Yes, but I don’t want to!” Dorian calls back, watching as Ashton kicks over boxes, shoves aside a bed, rattles a dresser drawer or three—not being overly rough but definitely executing a very pointed and thorough search of the room as the party fans out.
Orym twitches, faintly, from where he stands beside Dorian as he also takes in Ashton’s mildly aggressive tossing of the room, coupled with Laudna hanging off the balcony, shouting out her observations like an uncommonly loud gargoyle and a resounding thunk! as Fresh Cut Grass drops the lid to some great trunk in the corner of the room, uninterested in whatever it held—likely dying inside because he’s probably coming to the understanding Dorian came to the second he met this group which is: nobody here gives a single fuck about subtlety.
It’s the same understanding Dorian came to when he first joined up with the Crown Keepers, to be honest.
Orym sighs, once, to himself—not like, annoyed, but with some definite feelings of resignation—and limps over to where Laudna is almost fully folded over the bannister, clearly unable to pick anything out but refusing to give up. The halfling pats her hip once, affable as ever, before slipping over and vanishing onto the streets below.
Dorian himself is just about to go rustle the curtains or something—Ashton’s tearing through the place so fast there isn’t much uncovered real estate left and also he’s not, like, a detective, but bleeding all over a scene they’re actively investigating seems somewhat less than helpful—but a gasp startles him.
He turns to see Imogen stumbling away from where she’d been searching under the bed, one hand clasped over her mouth, the other stretched out, lilac electricity crackling under her skin as she drags out a very small, very Gnomish body with an invisible force.
Oh. Dorian winces.
“L-Letters?” Her voice wobbles as she calls out to the cleric, who wheels over quickly, tiny robot face distressed but—as ever—pinched with determination. Dorian draws closer, fingers twitching with his own healing as Fresh Cut Grass casts a quick spell, tutting to himself as he examines the body. Fearne slithers over—still in the form of a snake, gods only know why—to curl around Imogen’s boot and give a very sad, sympathetic flick of her tongue.
F.C.G. says, “She…she’s not fightnin’ anymore,” and their eye lamps seem to dim, slightly. Imogen nods once in understanding—Dorian eyes her sideways, sees how she’s unable to look away from the grisly wound stretching across Danas’ neck. Dorian knows it’s nothing she hasn’t seen before—he wishes it was the worst thing he’s ever seen—and part of him is distantly glad they’re both still unnerved by it. He doesn’t want to get used to this.
So he steps forward, crouching beside Imogen as he unclasps his cape. A soft breeze kicks up—just enough to allow the fabric to flutter out and fully cover the corpse, and he gently lays it down, shrouding it from sight.
“It’s just…” he sits back on his heels, frowning down at the sad little lump before them. “It’s unpleasant.”
Imogen nods once, faintly.
Some commotion follows—Dorian is only tangentially aware of it as he sits beside Imogen. He’s really, very spent, and has to imagine the others are too. Laudna begins to fix the door as best she can while Orym pops back in, still looking worse for wear from the fight. Fearne finally drops her Wild Shape, poking around at a large mirror in the corner of the room. Ashton is staring at them, idly irritated, clearly not understanding why the hell they are still occupying the space they are occupying.
The corpse lies before him and Imogen. She’s still looking at it, eyes soft and sad behind her large glasses.
“It’s only…” Bertrand is continuing to make a point Dorian confesses he has not been fully listening to. Imogen has been tying up Danas’ laces with telekinesis where her boots stick out from the edge of his cape. It’s oddly touching, and slightly creepy. He doesn’t comment. “I’m not a fan of perhaps taking a body to Lord Eshteross.”
Imogen’s mouth twists with dislike at his wording, but she flicks out her hand anyway. “We could always…” she says, and the blood that had been pooling against the bright colors of Dorian’s cloak vanish with her prestidigitation spell.
“We could…we could p-pretend she’s drunk?” her smooth accent stutters—Dorian glances over to see Imogen looks visibly unhappy at her own words, but still she grinds them out. A solution is needed, and she seems compelled to offer one—no matter how she personally feels about any of it. His mind briefly whirls with the implications of that—there are many, many things that can teach a person to forcefully ignore their own gut like that, and few of them are pleasant—before he tells himself to shut the fuck up, Dorian. “Act like her friend?”
No one immediately agrees or disagrees, and silences lapses in the room. Dorian idly skates a hand across the wound Bertand had left—it comes away red. Cheers.
“Is it…?” Fresh Cut Grass doesn’t have lips to worry, per se, but the hinges on his fingers sort of squeak quietly as he anxiously fidgets with them. “Is it our fault? What happened to her?”
Ashton says, “No,” quickly and with enough feeling that Dorian twitches at precisely the same time that Imogen breathes out, “Yes.”
They glance at each other from across the room—Imogen leaning around Dorian to frown while Ashton meets her with a scowl where he’s loitering by the balcony, anxious to leave.
“It was,” says Imogen, and there’s a brief bite to her words that Dorian immediately files away for later.
Ashton shakes their head, the light catching oddly on the spiked, serrated edges of the raw amethyst chunks of their hair. “No,” he says again. “She was in bad business with a bad person and bad things fucking happened.” He folds his arms—not mean, just. Certain. Absolute. “It happens.”
Imogen—Imogen does not like this. Dorian chances a glance down at her hands where they’re curled into fists at her knees—gods he doesn’t even want to think about how much shit Fearne is going to give him for all the looks he’s stealing—and watches the strange, purple glow of her magic pulse under her skin. Her expression twists at his words—displeasure bleeds into a quick angry flash that then dies away to reveal a look of such pained sadness that Dorian has to drag a hand through his hair to keep from doing something stupid and noble with it.
When she looks back at Ashton, her face is the same as always—lilac eyes behind a pair of large, round glasses, peeking out from the swoop of her bangs; features soft and shy. Fixed exactly to her liking.
“Sure,” she finally says. “If, if you say so.”
Footsteps, then—heavy ones. Dorian had actually forgotten they were in a very public place where this could happen and is embarrassed to say he has absolutely no fucking plan. Bard of the year, truly.
“Shit,” Ashton grinds out, which Dorian feels is moderately fair, because he had been trying to get the party to leave this room for like, the past half hour, to avoid this exact circumstance. “Balcony. Now.”
“What about the body?” F.C.G. asks, a bit too loudly for Dorian’s liking, personally, in the interest of not being arrested for murder and all that. The party fumbles to life, stiff and still a little unclear on what the actual goal is—there’s a brief discussion of a sketch, some furniture is haphazardly returned, Ashton gathers up a rug for purposes Dorian is not keen on knowing, presently.
The knock startles the room—which is stupid, because it was the natural next step after the footsteps. Everyone freezes, except Ashton, who curses under their breath and starts rolling the corpse up in the rug. Distantly, it reminds Dorian of a kind of crepe.
A voice on the other side of the door calls, “Hello?” and Fresh Cut Grass wobbles nervously on their wheel, gears squeaking softly as the group exchanges looks of varying degrees of panic. There is, Dorian reflects blandly, an awful lot of blood outside of their bodies, at this exact moment.
“Shit,” Imogen hisses out. Her fingers twitch anxiously at her sides, spitting errant, violet sparks as she passes her gaze over their party, mumbling under her breath—Dorian can see her running the numbers in real time; so idly fascinated by the way her sudden calculations have sharpened her soft features that he’s caught off guard when she settles on him, apparently, reaching out to grab hold. Her magic pulses beneath her skin—illuminated veins casting a faint, purple glow across his own icy complexion where she takes him by the hand. It reminds him faintly of a heartbeat, the way it flashes quicker and brighter with her nerves. “Dorian—come here!”
Dorian dutifully takes a step towards her and is promptly yanked the rest of the way. The party is a disorganized mess behind them—Ashton has the corpse slung over their shoulder, one foot on the bannister to the balcony beside Bertrand, who is half over the railing already, while Laudna tries to usher Fearne and Orym out her side, hastily replacing furniture as they go.
Imogen opens the door a crack—Dorian still has absolutely no idea what the play is here, but whatever it is he was deemed the best gensai for the job—and as he watches, her whole expression just closes—anxiety and concern and nerves all shuttered away before her face seems to open back up and reveal a shy, knowing sort of smile. She giggles—bubbly and bright—and her other hand deftly undoes a few buttons of her blouse where she’s still half-hidden behind the door and ah. Dorian knows this game.
Dorian can faintly hear Fresh Cut Grass exclaim “oh!” as Imogen’s shirt slips off one shoulder before Ashton gives the little bot a hearty shove towards the exit.
“Can I help you?” asks Imogen, layering her voice with an exaggerated breathiness that almost makes Dorian crack a grin. Damn but Imogen is good at this. He plants his hand on the door frame above her head, using a quick, unruly breeze to tousle his hair and shirt as he leans into view, smiling in a way that he hopes communicates what a thoroughly good evening he’s been having that definitely did not include getting literally stabbed in the back by his older, eyesight-impaired associate, thanks Bertrand.
Three guards, which Dorian is not necessarily jazzed about—one guard would have been great, none guards would have been really excellent—and one steps forward, looking between them. Dorian presses closer to Imogen, trying to hide the party and whatever fuckery they are likely engaging in behind them from sight.
“We’ve been getting some…complaints,” the guard says, voice low, gruff. He seems briefly distracted by the discovery of Imogen’s bare shoulder as she leans further into view. Dorian can relate. “Is everything alright?”
Imogen’s giggling before he even finishes—Dorian finds himself joining in because a) he can take a damn cue when he’s been given one, thank you and b) her laugh, fake as it is, is genuinely pretty catching.
She says, “We are so sorry,” with so much exaggeration that Dorian actually snorts for real before chiming in with, “Not the first time, if you know what I mean,” and sees Imogen’s shoulders hitch with real laughter her fake giggling hadn’t elicited.
There’s a somewhat conspicuous noise from the room behind them. Imogen plants a hand on Dorian’s chest and pulls herself closer while Dorian ducks his head down to rest his chin on her shoulder and block out the view the space had been providing into the room.
“Are we being too noisy?” he asks, with his best Capital S Smile.
“We can tone it down,” Imogen adds, all teeth and dimples.
There’s a very, very long pause. The guard is taking turns looking at both of them individually, seeming mostly annoyed and vaguely bemused.
“…Yes, please,” he says, at length, and there’s a brief moment where he zeroes in on Imogen, and Dorian’s fingers dance anxiously where they’re held high on the doorframe as he sizes her up—
Nothing. Imogen doesn’t crack—if anything, her performance grows brighter, more believable under his doubting, searching stare: smile pretty enough without being suspicious, laugh light enough without overdoing it. She even tilts her head just so to make her glasses slip down her nose. It’s weirdly alluring. Dorian decides to unpack that later.
“If you don’t mind,” he finally rumbles back. “You’re bothering the other patrons.”
Dorian glances down at Imogen to find her already looking up at him. They smile brightly, secretively, giggling all the while. It’s maybe the stupidest bit Dorian’s ever had a hand in, but he can’t deny how fun and easy and effective the little lie has become.
It’s a far cry from Nancy, is what he’s saying.
Imogen turns back to the guard, placing a teasing finger to her lips. Dorian knows that she knows tipping him a wink would be too much—any actor knows where to draw the line to keep the audience hooked, and bard or not, it’s clear she knows how to spin a lie or two—but he’s lost too much blood and today has been shitty and there’s something electrifying about watching Imogen rearrange her very features to play whatever part she needs that has him leaning forward, grinning ear to ear and adding, “Well, you can always tell them there’s room for a third!”
Imogen chokes trying to hold in her answering laugh—someone in the room behind them does not hold it in as well, however, and holy shit you guys—but the guard is too busy rearing away and turning twelve shades of red to notice.
The guard fumbles, magnificently, before nodding at them both and stalking off down the hall, his two compatriots following.
“Toodeloo!” Imogen calls, wiggling her fingers in farewell before Dorian pulls her back in and closes the door. He’s grinning way too hugely considering his current proximity to a dead body, but can’t help it. Imogen leans hard back against the door, offering a shaky smile back as she exhales hugely.
He watches as the sultry, shameless look she’d served the guard slides away, and her features soften again. She pushes her glasses back up her nose and Dorian is seized with the need to say something for literally no reason.
He’s saved when Bertrand goes tumbling over the railing with a shout—assisted, it seems, by Laudna. Ashton leans over to assess the fall damage, shrugs, and dumps the body after him. There’s an answering yelp.
“Time to go,” Imogen murmurs, voice low and quiet once more, and they make their way to the balcony as well, watching as Ashton leaps off, followed quietly by Orym. It is, Dorian muses, peering over the bannister as Bertrand grouses at the bruising her has surely suffered, a bit of a drop. And with all the respect in the world—Imogen is not someone he would necessarily describe as sturdy.
He knows he’s still riding the high of their successful performance—and, he knows he’s been bringing it up a lot, but he did quite literally lose a lot of blood at the hands of one Bertrand Bell an hour or so ago, just saying—because his manners slip, and he doesn’t so much ask Imogen if she would like assistance getting down as he simply bends down and scoops her up.
Imogen’s eyes go wide behind her glasses—her magic thrums a bit wildly under her skin, and as her arms come up around his neck to anchor herself, he can feel her pulse in her wrist—it’s a match. A magic heartbeat. Dorian tries and fails to not become instantly obsessed with this development.
“Oh! Sorry, uh, I figured we could fluttle—” he winces so hard he thinks he might have sprained something, “flutter down.”
She blinks a few times—she’s tense in his arms for one moment, two—and Dorian is struck at the way shyness and reservation clings to her even when she’d literally started undressing herself in plain view of a stranger, like, half a minute ago.
But before he can second guess, she settles—Dorian can see her searching him again, the way she had before she’d picked him as her wingman for the lie—and he wonders what it is she’s looking for, before he remembers oh gods she can hear thoughts oh no oh shit Imogen if you can hear this I am so sorry—
Imogen offers him a very small smile. “Sure,” she agrees. One dimple appears. “We’ll fluttle.”
And so fluttle they do—Fearne is Looking at him when he hits the ground, and he is decidedly not looking back—and Imogen thanks him quietly as he sets her on her feet.
“Imogen,” he says, as the rest of the group makes it down—other things he is not looking at: the rug Ashton has tied to the end of their hammer, because gods—she turns back to face him, expectant, and he gestures somewhat pointlessly. “Ah, your shirt.”
“Oh!” a flush heats her face as she quickly rights her clothing—the tips of her ears turn red where they peek out from her hair, and Dorian sure is running out of things he’s allowing himself to look at in this back alley, isn’t he?
She says, “Thanks, Dorian,” with a smile, before hurrying to catch up with Laudna. Dorian stares after her, only remembering to move when Orym taps his fist lightly against his hip.
“You’re my friend and I care about you," says Orym, measured as ever. He looks up at Dorian very pointedly. “Which is why I am telling you Fearne saw every moment of that and drew about thirteen thousand conclusions instantaneously.”
Dorian is vaguely pleased Orym chose to call it that. It sounds very manageable that way. Up ahead, from where she’s walking beside F.C.G. and Ashton, Fearne turns like she senses they’re gossiping about her—it’s a possibility Dorian hasn’t completely ruled out—and waggles her eyebrows ridiculously.
“You can always fluttle away,” Orym advises, completely neutral.
"I do very much hate you, you know," Dorian says back, not a whisper of heat in his reply.