Trudging back to his room at the Spire by Fire, Orym has never felt more exhausted in his life.
The day- scratch that, the week has been a lot. Saying goodbye to Opal and Dariax, Keyleth spiriting them onto the airship, being delivered into one of the most beautiful cities he's ever seen only to end up roped into its underworld a day later. All these people. A talking robot who eats copper pieces for breakfast. It's so much at once, and even the Orym of a few months ago who'd smuggled artifacts of betrayer gods and fought to save eldritch twins from power-hungry cultists would have been a little dubious if told this was his future.
Lord Eshteross' surprising turn of hospitality had been necessary if only for the chance to sit down without worrying what on earth was going to come next. He's looking out for them. It's sorely appreciated. They need someone like that to watch their backs, because there's only so many directions in which Orym can look by himself.
He was hesitant to leave Sir Bertrand to his drinking at the tavern, wrestling with the familiar urge in his stomach to protect. Though he's gotten them into a lot of trouble, what good Bertrand has done for their ragtag group is also undeniable. Orym doesn't want to see him hurt - especially if it's true he's an old friend of Keyleth's. Dorian at least seemed to have forgiven him for the stabbing, happy enough to watch the older man for a while. He left him humming along to his lyre, Bertrand calling jovially for another round.
And that brings him to now. Orym drags his weary feet down the hall to the room with the door cracked open, the one he assumes is the three of theirs to share. Inside, Fearne is folded onto a wooden stool in front of a small vanity, carefully braiding strands of sea-foam green around her horns. Orym clears his throat as he enters so as not to startle her. Fearne acknowledges him, tilting her head, and catches his eye in the mirror's reflection. She waves, some of the bells sewn onto her clothes tinkling softly.
Sometimes it's easy to forget she is a creature of the feywild. She looks ethereal like this. Maybe a little bit mad. That's what Orym likes about her, to the surprise of himself most of all.
"You alright?" He asks. He shuffles to the side of the bed to begin the long process of shedding his armor. Weary as he is, it's scuffed and bloodied to shit and it's better he does the cleanup now than tomorrow when they have places to be first thing in the morning. Prestidigitation is an easy fix when time is short but there’s something comforting about feeling his leathers secure under his own fingertips. It’s more of a ritual than a conscious effort after so many nights following the same routine.
Fearne shrugs her shoulders. She produces a peachy-coloured ribbon from nowhere and works it into the braid. "I'm good. It's a strange group of people we've ended up with, don't you think? Like that first night in Emon, but with less piss. Or maybe the same amount. Sir Bell is pretty senile.”
Orym chokes on a laugh, finally freeing himself of his pauldron and setting to work on the breastplate. “I guess. He’s got a pretty good backswing for an old-timer.”
“Mm, when it’s aimed at the right people. Do you trust them?”
“Who? Bertrand?”
“The others,” Fearne turns to look at him properly. “All of them,”
Her tone isn’t serious - it’s the same way she might ask if the weather outside is clear or overcast. Trust comes easily to Fearne, or maybe it’s that she doesn’t care enough to be upset that people often turn out worse than they appear. Orym still remembers the devastation on Poska’s face as she was held there, frozen, kissed softly and left behind. The gentle way Fearne had caressed his cheek in the forest and what it meant without her having to say a word.
Trust might be a heavy sentiment, then. He barely knows the rest of the group and as far as he can tell they’re all a different flavour of loose cannon, pointed in different directions and ready to go flying off at any moment. It could end badly for a lot of people if tonight is anything to go by, and not just those directly involved. Even with the best of intentions.
“I trust you and Dorian,” Orym answers instead. “And I trust you’ll have my back if anything goes so wrong we have to get out. The others…” he pauses. He thinks of the sadness Imogen carries, reminiscent of himself years ago. The way Laudna had puppeteered a dead rat named De Rolo as if she hadn’t a clue what it implied. “They have their own secrets. But they want to help. I believe that much. It’s enough for me at the moment.”
Fearne hums for a second, nodding sagely. “If it makes you feel any better, we could always kill them. Y’know, if they betray us.”
“I- I don’t think it’ll get to that point,”
At least he hopes it doesn’t. Fearne giggles and stands, towering over him.
“Me neither. Besides, I still have a score to settle with Ashton. They stole my earring,”
“That you stole from a priest,” Orym says under his breath, but it ends up more fond than chiding. He unlaces his shin guards, slipping into a comfortable silence as Fearne drifts around the room from one thing to another. By the time she makes to leave, mentioning a washroom down the hall she wanted to investigate before she slept, Orym is down to his plain undershirt and trousers. He waves her goodbye and rumages through his pack for the cloth and oil he uses to clean his armor. It's not difficult to lose himself for a while in the work.
Orym has always known vaguely of Vox Machina's conquests because everyone in Zephrah does. And over the years, he heard and saw a great deal more than he was meant to as Keyleth's silent shadow. He understands the kind of acts they were capable of even at the start. This quest is in no way comparable to her Aramenté - still, he can't help but wonder if Keyleth was troubled by the same uncertainty at first, as if she were climbing a mountain with no secure place to plant her feet.
The Air Ashari are organised. They’re efficient. Orym doesn’t remember going on a hunting trip that wasn’t meticulously thought-out, even when he was still in training. Derrig would probably have his head in his hands if he’d seen how the mission had gone tonight: from the dissolution of the plan at the warehouse to Orym’s blind panic to get to Danas leading him to throw caution to the wind and break down the door. How the gnome’s body lay limp and bloodless under the table despite it, the sickly-looking dwarf vanished into the night with no lead for them to follow.
They got paid, yes. But leaving a job half-finished feels wrong - especially one evidently with lives on the line. There’s not much he can do about it now but pledge to try his best tomorrow. Still, it leaves an uneasy feeling in his gut. He hasn’t felt so unsure about his own abilities in a while, not since…
No. There’s a slippery slope indeed. Orym won’t think about it.
Dorian comes up some time into it, feet heavier than usual from the alcohol, as Orym moves on from his pauldron to his sword. “Oh. I expected you both to be asleep. Did Fearne go downstairs again?”
The bard’s cheeks are a little flushed and his hair has started slipping out from its topknot in a mess he’d be mortified by if he noticed. That’s another thing Orym isn’t going to think about. Not the arm he’d slung around Imogen’s shoulders for the guards at the Weary Way or the easy charm that came with it, or even how Dorian’s hand had felt on his head trickling cool healing down his spine, asking blindly for help in the arcane darkness. Nope. Not at all.
“No. To the washroom,” Orym replies, looking back to the blade before that can go anywhere. “She’s been gone a while, though,”
Dorian nods in consideration. He begins to unclip various instruments from his clothes and place them down around the room, settling himself onto the stool Fearne had, fiddling with the clasp on his handaxe-turned-flute.
He looks restless despite the late hour. Like he might start vibrating out of his skin. “Maybe Little Mister needed a bath as well?”
“Not unlikely,” Orym reaches behind him for his whetstone and breaks off into a wince when it aggravates one of the wounds from the shade creeper’s claws. They were nasty little fuckers and Orym’s kind of embarrassed they got as many hits on him as they did. At least they were relatively easy to dispatch. Fearne ate one. Gross.
He leans forward to begin sharpening his sword, then stops, noticing Dorian’s lack of response. Orym looks up. Dorian is staring at him contemplatively, that energy bubbling up behind his schooled expression, mouth pulled down slightly at the corners.
“Something wrong?”
“You, uh,” His eyes flick to the side uncomfortably. “Came pretty close to the edge tonight. Too close. I get we didn’t know the shadow-whatsits would appear, or that the dwarf was so strong, or that he knew how to suck all the light out of the room with us still in it. It would have gone a lot differently if we’d known, obviously, but…” He gesticulates nervously, reaching out jerkily before deciding against it, dropping his hands to his knees. “I was sitting down there, supposedly drinking to our first job done and paid for, and all I could think about was what would’ve happened if I hadn’t managed to get to you in the dark. If one of those things intercepted me and I got turned around. You were barely hanging on. We wouldn’t have been able to find you to heal you. Well, maybe Fearne could've, but she was a snake.”
Orym, who realised what was going to be said halfway through Dorian saying it, places his sword beside him on the bed in resignation. Dorian has a bleeding heart that is loyal to no end, and the what-ifs get to him more than anybody else he knows. Orym has seen firsthand how far he’d go to protect those he cares about. It’s often to his own detriment. If something had happened to any of them, it makes sense that he’d take the responsibility onto himself.
“Dorian, I’m fine. I promise. A little banged up, but we all are, and it’s nothing a night’s rest and a little time won’t fix. You got there in time. It’s okay,”
“Is it, though? Because this isn’t the first time I’ve noticed it. You act recklessly with your own life to protect others when you don’t even have to. It happened with Eshteross, it happened with that dwarf, it happened a billion other times back in Tal’dorei. They say you shouldn’t kick a man while he’s down but apparently in your case, the man who is down will decide to kick you. And it’s stupid. You are so brave, Orym, but you are stupid sometimes,”
It echoes painfully things he’s been told before, which is frustrating. He doesn’t know how to explain to people sometimes that this is all he can do. He’s no good with his words. Often the only way Orym can show he cares is by pushing himself to the knife’s edge and saying I’d rather it be me than you. He can’t watch those he loves suffer. In the past, it’s only wrecked him. And he does love them, Opal and Dariax back in Byroden and Fearne and Dorian who came with him all the way to Jrusar. He realised before they left that he’d die for any of them. He doesn’t want to, but he would.
The wind isn't howling but it's picking up outside, throwing him off-kilter with the ghostly impression it sends through his druidcraft. He shivers though he's unsure from what. It'll be a cold night.
“It’s my job. I’m not technically a guard anymore, but that’s still what I trained to do, and it’s what I’m good at. Somebody has to play infantry so those who aren’t made for the heavy hits stay alive. I can take those hits. You have to let me do my job so you can do yours.”
At some point, Dorian has started to pace lightly. “Yes, I get that, but surely it doesn’t have to just be you? Ashton has certainly proved they can take a beating as well as they can deal one. Sir Bell’s a capable fighter. Hell, even Fearne and I can take a few hits if you’re struggling. You know that by now, right?”
Orym does know it. What he doesn’t know is what he can tell Dorian without telling him a lot of other things he’d rather avoid, so he resolves to say nothing at all, staring at the floorboards with his arms tucked tight against his chest.
It goes quiet save for Dorian’s slowing footsteps, the occasional harried puff of air, his anxiety burning away. Eventually, the bard stops. He stands, a little lost, in the middle of the room. Then, he steps over and picks up Orym’s sword tentatively. Places it further back to sit next to him on the bed. The wood creaks a little. It's almost as if the weight of the world is coming down on the regal line of his shoulders, forcing the stiffness of his spine to buckle under the pressure.
“I’m sorry for yelling. It's been a really long day, and that’s not helpful to either of us. I just- I feel like my hair will be completely white by the time we find who we’re looking for, from all the stress watching you fight puts me through,” he confesses, eyes lowered, lips curved minutely. Oddly enough, that one sentence stops his throat more than anything else has in the last few months. Orym feels recognised in a way that he usually tries to avoid - somebody looking at him and understanding what they might be seeing for the first time in a long while.
“Yeah, well. Couldn’t hurt to have another silver fox on our team.” He hopes his voice isn’t too rough. Dorian barks a surprised laugh.
“Definitely puts a positive spin on it, I suppose.”
Orym can’t tell how long they sit like that. It ends with exhaustion overtaking him, Dorian nudging him gently on the shoulder to stop him from falling asleep against his side. Together, they tidy away what’s left of Orym’s armor and weaponry and lay Dorian’s finer clothing haphazardly over the vanity, the bard mumbling something about needing to let the fabric air out. There’s only one bed but neither of them are bothered by sharing. Orym stretches an arm to reach for the candlestick once they’re settled between the sheets. Dorian stops him. Fearne will put it out when she’s back.
That just leaves the two of them lying face to face in the dim candlelight. Orym fights to keep his eyes open, feeling an inexplicable urge to remember the moment as well as he can. Dorian’s skin washes teal under the orange glow. It reminds him of the sky at sunrise back home, on the rare chance he’d have time to watch it with his husband. The memory doesn’t sting as much as it might have with the way Dorian is watching him in turn, as if he’s something worthy of looking after. Of keeping safe.
“I’m sorry for worrying you,” Orym murmurs. “Don’t want you to get hurt. Don’t like giving people the chance, you know?”
There's a shift of fabric as cool lips press against his forehead, a whispered word. The familiar breeze of Dorian's magic dances lightly over his body, closing up any wounds left uncared for and dulling the worst of his aches and pains.
Dorian pulls away to smile, a little sad. “I know. It’s okay. Sleep, Orym,” he says. “I’ve got your back.”
(When Fearne returns, neck heavier with a string of silvery beads she’d managed to swipe from a drunken patron downstairs, she finds them curled into each other, head under chin, Dorian’s hand curved lightly across Orym’s narrow waist. She likes them a lot, these strange friends of hers who don’t say what they mean. Even when they're reckless in the scary way and she has to worry whether or not she'll lose them for good. Fearne stows away her spoils into her dress - thinks on it, then tucks a few gold pieces she’d come across into Orym and Dorian’s packs as well. For safe-keeping.
She shucks off her cape, hanging it over her staff in the corner of the room, and sheds as many of the larger flowers in her hair as she cares about crushing on the pillows. Reaches with her magic to snuff out the candle and tucks herself carefully under the blanket, as far around them as she can get. Her fur will keep her protected from the coldest of the Jrusar night but her companions are more susceptible.
That’s alright. If they stay together, there’ll be warmth enough for everyone.)