we could break a silver lining

The thing about one night stands is that they’re supposed to be a one night feature and that’s it. They aren’t supposed to turn up at the same party a day later, lead Dorian into the first, second, and third most dangerous situations of his life, put their life on the line for his without a second thought, and then wind up on the run with him.

They aren’t supposed to be both Dorian’s steadiest, wisest friend and the most intense, meaningful fuck of his life.

They’re also supposed to remember all of that, and Orym doesn’t.

The journey to Niirdal-Poc is torture because of it.

This wasn’t what Dorian thought he was getting when he asked Lolth to restore that week they lost. Unraveling the memories from that forgotten time is already like trying to swim in a river overflowing its banks, being buffeted from one interlocked stream of memory to the next. The five – no, the six of them – had done so much in so little time, it’s easy to think through those first and ignore the other things he now knows, but is choosing not to think about.

After all, fighting with Orym over the circlet is fresh in his mind. Orym has made a habit of making himself small among their group, abdicating every decision to Dorian and then to Fy’ra Rai, and now he has the sheer audacity to pick a fight when one thing doesn’t go right?

Betrayed fury feels better than thinking about the other set of memories prickling under his skin, begging him to uncover them, but it doesn’t last.

They trudge through the jungle while Dorian is hot and irritable for reasons that have nothing to do with the humidity or insects. Those things are bad enough, but it’s Orym’s intense stare burning holes into Dorian’s back that’s getting in his head. Anger heats his blood whenever he catches Orym’s mistrustful watch, and then he’s hit with the memory of Orym offering him a crown of flowers with a wistful smile. It’s unbearable.

It’s also the worst of the memories, because it’s the one that helps him know that dark goddesses aren’t playing tricks with him. Dorian finds the circlet of flowers that first night, flipping frantically through his journal until the blank pages fall open and it’s there where he left it. Slamming the heavy book closed, Dorian shoves the journal back into his pack without touching the crown. The proof that it’s all real is enough.

Most of his dreams that night are of spiders and laughter, darkness growing like a thorny vine around his head, and the single, bright-burning moment Dorian saw Orym for the first time: unburdened, astonished joy breaking over his face before it’s lost to the dark.

The game of never-have-I-ever on the last night before they make it to the city is Opal’s suggestion. Someone declares a thing they’ve never done and everyone who has done it drinks. It’s the sort of simple, tidy drinking game that would have delighted Dorian under different circumstances.

They can feel it now, that they’re getting close to the place Fy’ra Rai has promised to take them. They’re on a quest, not merely wandering aimlessly across the continent, and it’s improved everyone’s mood.

Opal produces a dubiously-labeled bottle from Byroden from her pack with a flourish and beams at all of them. “I was saving this for a special occasion. But – well, a random day three months after we started traveling is probably as good a reason as any, right?” She’s looking directly at Dorian when she adds, “We should know more about each other than we do.”

He opens his mouth to protest that it’s unfair to only pick on him for being private, that Orym is so good at making himself invisible during personal conversations that none of them know anything about him. The comfortable rapport between them is gone and they’re barely speaking, though, so Dorian clamps his jaw shut and looks at the fire instead.

Dorian is feeling the effects of his cloistered life by the fourth round. He hasn’t had a single drink yet, even as he looks at the red-brown liquid in his cup with obvious longing. Then Fy’ra Rai settles back to look between all of them, declares that she’s never kissed a stranger, and Dorian freezes. He wonders if her gift showed her the truth about them, or if maybe she’s just always known this about him and Orym.

At the flurry of tiny movements around the fire, cups raising and emptying, Fy’ra Rai looks delighted, and perhaps a little proud of Dorian in particular when she declares, “So many of you!”

Dorian shakes off his discordant emotions when he looks to Orym and sees that his head is turned down, his untouched cup loose in his hand. Of course. Orym isn’t the kind of person who would make a habit of kissing strangers. The idea of Orym going around and kissing strangers would be funny, except for the part where it makes Dorian feel a little ill. Orym doesn’t remember the one time he did.

“Not me,” Dariax shrugs, although he still drinks. “Kissing people you’re never going to see again feels a little like making a promise you’re not going to keep. Except Tharla. Amazing kisser.” Opal gives a little snort of laughter from her place across from Dorian and Dariax winks at her.

“I think I like kissing the most,” says Fearne, slicing a violently blue fruit with one of Orym’s daggers. “Not that the rest is bad, but kissing is just so pleasant, don’t you think?”

Dorian has only kissed a stranger once, and it was – well.

“What do you mean you don’t kiss people when you’re with them?” Dorian doesn’t know if this is just one more thing he didn’t know about the world, didn’t think to know about everyone else, or if it’s one of Dariax’s unusual quirks.

There are a lot of things that Dorian did that night with Orym, but he absolutely remembers the kissing. More specifically, how much there had been and how much he’d enjoyed it. Every time Dorian catches a glimpse of Orym now, it’s interrupted by another sliver of memory, reminding him how the candlelight gleamed on Orym’s neck when his head dropped back, swallowing the delicious noises he makes when he comes. Now he thinks about kissing him what would become the last time, when they were sure it would be only one of many more.

“It's weird to kiss hookups," Opal declares, sitting back against her pack like a queen. “You don't know where their mouths have been. I regret ever doing it.”

Dorian adjusts his mouth into what he hopes looks like a teasing grin. “Didn't you come to Emon straight from your hometown? Even if you had hookups in Byroden, don't you already know where everyone's mouths have been?”

“Yes, and it's so much worse.” She huffs and rolls her eyes, looking between each of them with an appraising glance. “None of you understand. Maybe Dariax.”

“There are too many other fun things to do to worry about kissing,” Dariax offers, stoking the flames in the hearth with the end of his spear. When he pulls it back, he looks pleased and removes a charred piece of bread Dorian hadn’t seen him stick in the fire. “Unless it's the other kind. What about you, Dorian? Bards get around.”

“I–” Anything he says is going to be a lie, and so Dorian avoids looking anywhere but the hazy outline of Dariax’s bright and curious face. Not even looking him in the eye when he says, “I agree with Fearne. I like kissing.” It isn’t strictly untrue, and the best kind of lie to tell is one that isn’t a lie, merely a narrowly-constructed truth. “I’m a bit more of a romantic.”

“Like the poets,” Fearne breathes delightedly. “The adventures of Lord Kyron are very popular where I’m from.”

Dorian reaches out with both hands and grabs for the offered topic change. “Oh, I don’t know those,” he says brightly.

It’s only when Fearne is explaining about Kyron’s scandalous assignations with the Queen of Morning and subsequent exile from the Seelie Courts that he dares to look in Orym’s direction and finds him looking back with an inscrutable expression. His stomach swoops again and – well, Dorian isn’t only feeling anger anymore, at least.

“What about you, Orym?” Fearne’s eyes alight on him with impish pleasure. “Do you kiss your partners?”

For half a heartbeat, Dorian completely misreads the discomfort on Orym’s face and feels his own face heat. Then Orym shrugs and says, “Yes, although my experience is with people I know well.”

“Which is not gross, just to be clear,” interjects Opal, holding up a finger to them all and turning her entire body toward Orym. “Wait, let me guess – childhood sweetheart? You seem like you would have one.”

Dorian tries to pretend he has nothing invested in this line of conversation, examining the tragic state of his cuticles while Orym hesitates. Dorian isn’t sure whether it’s flattering that he’s the only stranger Orym kissed, that they did a lot more than just kiss. It doesn’t sit well with Dorian that Orym doesn’t know that he’s just made a liar of himself.

“Yes,” Orym answers patiently and Dorian snaps his head up fast enough to make his neck twinge. “But we married young. Not much time for kissing strangers.”

Orym may as well have confessed to pinning Dorian to a building and sucking his cock for the reaction around the fire. The collective noise of their friends is a little like an agitated hive of bees circling around Orym. Dorian feels like he’s been knocked flat, like the ground is spinning off-center beneath him. It feels impossible to piece together what that would mean about Orym, about their night in Emon, about all those kisses he’s been near obsessing about. Orym’s married.

Orym doesn’t look even remotely like Dorian would expect a married man to at this moment. He doesn’t look like someone who simply misses someone beloved that they’ve been separated from. He looks broken, like he only wants to run.

No one sees Dorian’s expression when he puts together what he knows with what Orym is about to say next. He realizes that they’ve all gone too far, and it feels like standing at the top of a mountain and watching the start of a landslide beneath his feet. Breathless and powerless to stop the inevitable devastation it will cause.

“You’re married?” Opal’s drink sloshes over the side of her cup as she scrambles upright.

“Widowed,” Orym corrects, bending forward to add wood to the fire.

The mundane simplicity of the word leaves Dorian with a strangling lump in his throat. That buzzing noise cuts suddenly and not a single one of them moves, staring at Orym with variations on the same astonished horror Dorian is drowning himself in.

“Oh, fuck,” Opal says first, scooting closer and pulling Orym into a crushing hug. “I am going to find you so many strangers to kiss, Nancy.”

“And the other kind of kissing,” Dariax promises solemnly, refilling Dorian’s empty cup and waggling his eyebrows in Orym’s direction. “I know so many people who are going to love that between-the-leg roll.”

“We’ll see,” Orym tells them with his face red, but he doesn’t look uncomfortable anymore. He looks grateful, glad to be there. Then he lifts his cup in Dorian’s direction. “I think maybe I’m like Dorian. More romantic than not.”

Orym is right, of course, but for all the wrong reasons. Sure that anyone who sees his face will immediately know the truth, Dorian empties his cup without even waiting for the next round.

Opal is laughing when she lifts her cup and declares, “Never have I ever been married, what the fuck!”

Orym lifts his cup obligingly and drains it in one, wearing a shy smile and flushing from the tips of his ears to his chest, but he doesn’t say anything else. Fearne considers this for a minute with an impish smile before taking a very small sip of her drink to raucous cheers around the fire.

Dorian considers going for a walk to clear his head, knowing it won’t do anything at all.

We don’t know what the future is, were the last words Orym spoke to him that night they first met, wistful and a little longing for a different future than the one they both thought was ahead of them.

Orym had said it again when they met for a second time, smiling over the rim of a tankard, a little shy and plainly glad to see Dorian again. We don’t know what the future is.

At the time, the cornflower crown had been the tangible reminder of a single, perfect night where they knew with complete certainty what the morning would bring. Now it’s a fragile thing pressed between empty pages in his journal that Dorian is afraid to ruin by taking it out. The clunky symbolism isn’t lost on Dorian, but the memory itself is already sullied by everything else that’s happened.

Memories don’t live in perfect stasis like an insect in amber, beautiful and immovable. Whatever it is these memories mean to Dorian now, whatever they were then, he’ll never be able to keep them as they were. Maybe if he and Orym hadn’t met again. It surprises Dorian how much he dislikes that notion, even as bad as things are between them right now.

A hand on his shoulder jerks him back to the fire and it’s Orym standing next to him, watching him with a guarded expression. “Are you okay?” he asks in a low voice only for Dorian to hear, but everyone is pointedly looking anywhere but the two of them. The two of them have barely spoken in days, and Dorian knows that they’re straining to hear whatever answer he gives.

“Head in the clouds,” he says lightly, closing the door on his memories in a single stroke. “Nothing to worry about.”

“Let me know if you need to come back down.” Orym squeezes his shoulder tightly. His thumb brushes over his covered collarbone and Dorian remembers another moment entirely, back when this hadn’t been so difficult. Then Orym lets go, bids the others good night on his way to his bedroll.

Perhaps it’s because he was already thinking of it, but Dorian watches him go with the dizzying insensibility he’d last felt in Emon, flowers spilling from his hair when he kissed Orym and wished it could all be different.

It’s apparent by the next morning that they’ve almost arrived. Dorian can tell from the downward slope into a valley, coming down from the cloud forest they’ve been walking in for days. Fy’ra Rai assures them they only have another hour or two ahead of them, and Dorian is impatient to get to whatever it is they’re moving toward, eager to be working toward a goal. Something else to occupy his thoughts.

The game from the night before hasn’t only left him with a brutal hangover from Opal’s suspect bottle, but a black mood worse than the one after his conversation with the Spider Queen. Dorian’s dreams are abstract and terrifying, but they dissipate like mist in the morning sun, leaving him with nothing but the spiral of shame and memory.

Orym was married before. Dorian didn’t just fuck a stranger, not just a friend, but one who has experienced a loss that Dorian can’t even fathom.

Knowing what Orym once had, what he must have lost to grieve as deeply as he does, changes everything Dorian thought he knew about him. It casts an entirely different light over his memories in Emon. It's no longer a romantic interlude in Dorian's journey, but the desperately sad coda to a tragedy that has nothing to do with him at all. It's a widower trying to figure out what he wants from his life, who tried something to move on and it didn't work.

Or maybe it did, but Orym doesn't remember what it was he decided about it. He'll never know.

All the same, it makes everything Dorian is suffering seem small by comparison. As a result, he’s feeling much too sorry for himself to pay attention to where he’s walking on their march through the jungle. The rest of the group walks around the stony outcrop, but Dorian trips, catches himself on one knee and swears bitterly under his breath instead of standing up and moving on immediately.

A gloved hand extends under his face and Dorian looks up from the ground to confirm that it’s Orym, braced against the rock with his other hand. He takes it while trying not to think too hard about the warm leather pressed against his bare palm and mumbles his thanks, hoping that Orym will fall back to his usual place behind everyone else.

“We might get to rest when we get there,” Orym offers instead, falling into step with Dorian. He doesn’t even seem bothered by needing to walk faster to keep up with Dorian’s longer strides. There’s an extra beat that suggests nervousness before Orym adds, “We’ve had a hard journey since Byroden.”

Dorian supposes this is Orym’s way of starting an apology while also extending the same grace to him. It doesn’t feel right, though, rubbing up against the part of him that’s still angry at Orym for not speaking up sooner, not even participating in the conversation to keep the crown in the first place.

“Tempers do flare on long journeys, don’t they?” Even as he says it, Dorian wants to shrink back from the words, shove them into his pack with the journal and the flower crown. They sound like the sort of thing a different version of himself would have said, someone who isn’t supposed to exist anymore.

Orym peers back up at him with an unchanging expression, not taking the bait but somehow making it clear to Dorian that he’s only choosing not to. Then he clears his throat pointedly. “None of us are our best right now.”

That seems to be the end of that attempt at conversation, but Orym keeps walking with him anyway. The streams of water around them seem to be converging into something larger, but the first waterfall they find is spectacular in the mist, barely more than a few feet high, rushing into a deep pool full of bright colored fish.

“I’m sorry about your–”

Well, Dorian doesn’t actually know anything about whomever Orym was married to. All he knows is that Orym seems to have some inclination toward people like Dorian, not whether Dorian is characteristic of his type or an outlier.

“Husband,” Orym supplies, remarkably without emotion as he does. “It’s been five years, though.”

“Just the same,” Dorian presses, because he can’t apologize for any of the rest right now, not with the maelstrom of memories and hurt feelings that he’s stuck in. “It doesn’t seem like it’s any easier for you.”

“You don’t know how bad it was five years ago.”

Dorian can’t help liking the way Orym presents himself without artifice right now. It suits him much more than being silent and unquestioning, as though he’s only some city guardsman who left home on an errand. It seems a little more like the man he met in Emon, who let a stranger flirt with him, who barely hesitated to take what Dorian offered. The difference between the two is so apparent, it’s almost as though Dorian met a completely different Ashari halfling named Orym in Emon. Almost.

Just ahead, Dorian can hear the astonished noises of their friends and thinks they must be close to wherever they’re going. Before he can join them, Orym holds out an arm to catch Dorian’s thigh and stop him.

“Before you go,” he says, and Dorian’s heart hammers furiously, completely out of place with what he knows intellectually this must be about. He knows Orym doesn’t remember and he’s still terrified to imagine what he’ll think when he does know.

“Orym, I promise that I’m no danger to you,” Dorian tries assuring him, thinking of how Orym stayed up half the night after the fight. After days of turning over their fight in his head, Dorian thinks that he most hates the idea that Orym doesn’t trust him anymore. He’s reasonably sure he would feel the same without the intrusive memory that he and Orym were lovers once.

“It’s not that.” Orym seems to consider him for another too-long moment, his eyes flicking from Dorian’s eyes to his hands, to his white-tipped hair. “Please just be careful. That’s all.”

Then he walks on, leaving Dorian standing alone among the ferns they’ve been pushing their way through for weeks. Frustration and anger and something else he can’t quite define roil up in his stomach, burning his throat like acid.

“That’s the kind of thing that sounds patronizing, Orym,” he says conversationally, but Orym is already standing at the top of a waterfall overlooking an impossible city with the others. Dorian isn’t sure what it is, exactly, Orym wanted him to say in response to that, only that probably wasn't it.

One of the few wishes Dorian is granted is of course perverted and given in the worst way when Opal is nearly stolen off the streets of Niirdal-Poc. The fight and the resulting chaos means that Dorian doesn’t have the chance to overthink much of anything, at least not until they finally settle in for the night in Elam’s upper bedroom. They’re exhausted, battered and badly shaken, but they’re safe now, and Dorian is awake on his cushion by the window.

When Dorian left home, the broad uncertainty of the future was an exciting thing. Now, it’s only daunting to consider the things that might lie ahead, knowing that he’s handled his past so poorly. Whatever his future will be, it will be decided by the choices he’s made before. Dorian can’t change those things, but he still doesn’t know what it is he wants from the future.

The day in the city has clarified some things, and raised other questions Dorian can't answer. Not now.

“Your thoughts are loud, little brother,” Fy’ra Rai tells him from her place against the wall, although her burning eyes are shut when she speaks in a low voice, not so loud as to wake the others. “Try and rest. Your troubles will meet you tomorrow.”

“They seem to find me right here just as well,” he says, trying for a wry, conciliatory tone. He feels silly for missing his flute. He feels considerably less silly for his guilty conscience, for abandoning Orym to those horrifying stone constructs, for – for a lot more than just that.

“No,” she says in a strange voice. “The troubles that visit you in the dark of night are only ghosts. You will know real trouble when it comes to you.”

Belatedly, several seconds later, the strangeness of her tone sinks through Dorian’s self-pity. Fy’ra Rai is awake for the same reasons he is: turning over memories and regrets in hope they will mean something new if they stare hard enough.

“You have a kind of future sight,” he says, rolling over to face her. “What do you see?”

“I see what my gift offers me.”

Dorian isn’t blind, even if he’s been preoccupied with Orym. He saw the way she stayed back to talk with Thrascuur, her worried eyes following his every movement the same way Orym does, the grim fear whenever she looks at him. She's leaving them and it feels as though he’s just letting her down over and over. Dorian is letting himself down a lot lately.

At last, he only asks, “Will we all meet again?”

Fy’ra Rai opens her burning eyes and her face is soft and affectionate. Affection for him, he realizes with a new pinprick of guilt. “I have no need for the gift to know that we will, Dorian.”

“I’ll go for a walk,” he suggests, sliding a dagger into his belt and leaving his lute by the window. Dorian’s eyes fall on the others and Fy’ra Rai nods to him.

“I will watch over them.”

Hesitating a moment, Dorian clears his throat. “I was actually going to ask if you’d walk with me.”

Her desire to stay with the others, whom she’s sworn to protect, and her obvious wish to have this chance to make things right with him war on her face.

“Dariax is on watch,” continues Dorian, but he looks down at Orym and his sword, Mister coiled up underneath his head like a pillow. Sleep softens all of Orym’s features, lifting his worries from his face and making him look more like he had when they met.

Dorian wants to go back to the way things were before, he just isn’t sure which before he wants: the one where he and Orym were polite friends traveling together, or the one where Dorian believed that the future was an endless possibility. That they might see one another again and be something more than strangers. Both are equally impossible now.

Fy’ra Rai watches him, reaches for her collapsed staff and stands. “I will walk.”

Silence with Fy’ra Rai is never precisely companionable, but it isn't the hostile thing it once was, either. Dorian wanted the company, and he specifically wanted her company tonight, before it’s too late and he loses it. Perhaps Fy’ra Rai is confident they’ll meet again, but Dorian has lost faith in predicting the future.

As they walk, Dorian examines the garden terraces of Elam’s neighborhood, vines frothing like green lace down the face of the buildings. There are small squares with fountains of crystalline water, the smell of pipe smoke drifting along the street. Niirdal-Poc is a wonder in every sense of the word and Dorian is sorry that they won’t stay longer, doesn’t have enough optimism in him to think he’ll ever return.

Rather than give voice to any of those things, he asks Fy’ra Rai, “Are you thinking of your sister?”

“I can only think of what danger she must be in. What I could say to reconcile with her after so long. You understand,” she says, hesitating over her next words with a smile that seems at once fearful and hopeful. “Is it like that for you and your brother?”

“No,” Dorian laughs, startled. “He wouldn’t do what you are. For me? No.”

“Then I am sorry for what he does not know he lost,” she answers, searching the ground ahead of them. “What is it you hope to do now?”

Dorian knows this is what Fy’ra Rai most wants to know, to have some assurance she hasn’t abandoned him to the darkness the way he had done to her. It would be deserved, but she isn’t like that, isn’t like him. That’s why he sought her company now.

“I don’t know. We don’t know what the future is,” he says, wincing as he hears the echo of Orym’s voice beneath his own.

“That is unexpectedly wise of you, little brother,” she says, her tone a bit dampened. “Although you understand it may not be a comfort to one who looks to the gift for guidance on the future.”

“I don’t find it very comforting, either. I'm not even sure I know what the past is, anymore.” At her lifted eyebrows, an obvious prompt, Dorian looks ahead to the silver-lit plaza with the statue of the Observer. “You learn something new and someone – something you thought you remembered well doesn’t feel like it did before.”

“Looking at the future is much the same. What I think I understand and what it means when I arrive at that moment is not always the same.”

“Then why try and understand the future at all?” Dorian knows he sounds petulant now, but – well, what he wants is for Fy’ra Rai to tell him what it is he’s supposed to do, even if it’s not fair of him to ask.

“Tell me,” she continues, folding her hands behind her back and pacing the stones as if she’s walking a meditative labyrinth. “What is it you want from me? What path can I set you on that you do not already know of?”

Dorian clenches his jaw shut to keep from talking while he’s thinking for once. It feels like he and Orym have reached some sort of tense détente, but without having discussed what that means. They’re not bad, but they’re not exactly fine.

“I don’t know how to make things right with Orym,” he says at last. “That’s not all, but – but that would be a start.”

“You're still thinking about your fight.”

“I wish he knew I meant it when I said I cared about him more than I do that damned crown.”

That’s not all, though, and Fy’ra Rai seems to sense this. She doesn’t speak, but her eyes turn toward him with a quick, golden blaze along the lines of her tattoos, as if something’s just fallen into place for her, or perhaps her gift has shown her the truth about them. Some kind of truth about them, at least.

“I see,” she says meaningfully, and Dorian looks at her and knows that she does. He’s never asked how her gift manifests, but he hopes that it’s shown her something abstract rather than explicit. “When?”

“Before we all met for the first time. There was this festival with fires and flowers and we had no reason to think we would ever meet again. Emon is such a large city. And when we did, things just – what time did we have? You know what happened after that. You saw.”

“Orym doesn’t remember?”

Dorian rubs a hand against his cheek, avoiding her eyes by looking anywhere but at her. “No,” he says, clearing his throat conspicuously. “If I didn't remember, I can't suppose he does. I only knew when my memories returned.”

“Dorian.” She pronounces his name very carefully and he feels palpable relief that she doesn’t call him little brother right now. Talking about Orym with Fy’ra Rai feels like talking about him with his brother, a thought that makes him shudder.

“I can’t tell him this. He wouldn’t believe me, and – Fy, I’m still so angry at him.”

“I don’t think you are angry.” Looking back down at her, Dorian sees all her affectionate warmth for him, all the things that make her worry for him. “I think you are frightened.”

He reflexively wants to argue with her, but he knows immediately that she’s right: Dorian isn’t angry anymore. Standing in the cool, revealing light of the Observer, he isn’t sure if he ever really was, or if he mistook some other emotion for anger.

He doesn’t think before he says, “I hate that I’m the only one who knows this happened. I hate that he’s not the same as he was. I wish you could have seen how – how free he was before this all came down on us. You heard him the other night.”

“Oh, Dorian.” This time when she says his name, it comes out a little broken and sorry for him. Dorian doesn’t even mind when she folds him into a hug, her arms tight around his chest as her head only comes up to shoulder height. He doesn’t remember the last time he’d been held like this. Maybe not since Orym in Emon. Before then – well, that was another life, and not a gentler one.

“I don’t know how I’m not supposed to think it’s my fault,” he concludes, Fy’ra Rai’s hair fluttering alongside his ears, giving the faintest impression of warmth in the night air.

“May I tell you what I think about that?”

“Please.” Dorian is nevertheless glad to be asked first. Even if it’s going to be another parable, it makes this feel much less like being scolded by an older sister.

“The thing that happened to Orym – that loss he endures – has nothing to do with that crown, or whatever you did together.”

Dorian gets as far as opening his mouth to protest. He isn’t so self-centered as to mistake himself as being responsible for something like that before he remembers that he is indeed making that mistake. “I didn’t mean that. I mean that I’ve seen what he was before this, and now it seems like we made it harder for him to move on in that process. Like he went backward.”

Her hands stay on his shoulders when Fy’ra Rai steps away from him – to make sure he can see her eyes, he’s pretty sure. She holds his gaze long past the point Dorian is comfortable, until it feels rude and aggressive, and only then does she smile a little.

“You do not grieve in an ordered sequence,” she explains in a kind, patient voice. “It feels like being a river: some days you flow peacefully through, and others you crash against the rocks, hurt and angry. Some days I feel as though my life has finally settled into the shape it will be without Fy’ra Kai, and others it is as though I am starting from the beginning. It does not seem to matter how long it has been, I still feel–”

Her voice breaks and Dorian rests his hands over hers, clasping them with a surge of warmth that feels complicated by what he’s done to her. “You don’t have to tell me this. I think I understand.”

“I know that you understand losing things you care about,” she gives his hands a return squeeze. “I think you grieve what you left behind and I think it was immeasurably brave for you to do so.”

“But it’s different,” Dorian provides, and Fy’ra Rai nods her head once.

“To know what you must lose, to choose anyway, is a terrible choice to make. You must grieve so much before you let go. But to have it taken from you, unwilling and unprepared? That is what Orym is feeling. It does not matter how long it has been.”

It helps Dorian understand, but understanding doesn’t make him feel any better. He gently disengages himself from Fy’ra Rai and paces a few steps beyond her into the square lit with silver-gray light. The Observer stands over them with her placid, unflinching gaze fixed on the middle distance, telling him nothing at all.

“Orym is glad to know you,” Fy’ra Rai tells him when Dorian is standing some ten feet away, still staring up at The Observer. “I do not believe he regrets having met any of you, however frightened he may be to lose one of you. That is the nature of loving people.”

“He doesn’t love–”

“You know that is not true.” Fy’ra Rai links her arm in his with a silencing glance, leading him on from the square back to Elam’s house. “You should tell him what happened.”

Dorian tries to keep from tripping, tries not to remember anything in particular when he’s walking with Fy’ra Rai. It's a long time, most of the way, before he says, “We just talked about how he’s grieving. We’re both still a little raw from that fight. I don’t know how it would help to know that we–”

She holds up one hand, Elam’s house rising up out of the shadows of the street, and they stop just short of the door. “Forgive me, I don’t wish to know any of the details, but he should.”

“I won’t – no details, but won’t it seem a bit shallow? This meaningless thing he did in Emon, before either of us knew we were going to end up doing all of this together?” Dorian looks up at the house, to the room where Orym will be waking soon for his watch. He imagines trying to tell him the truth, but for all that those tender and aching memories are drowning him, they still feel so small compared to an entire life lost.

“No, I think he should know that he was happy when he was with you.” Fy’ra Rai pushes the door open and holds her hands out to Googal to sniff, steps aside for Dorian to do the same. “I think that will matter to him very much. Tell him.”

Tell him.

It’s a constant refrain, a drumbeat inside Dorian’s skull every step of the way after they leave Niirdal-Poc. Telling Orym about Emon seemed sensible when Fy’ra Rai suggested it. It’s another matter entirely when they’re alone again, traveling with that crown and a dark goddess whispering in Dorian’s ear.

Instead, Dorian rehearses the conversation in his mind for days. Orym keeps closer to the group, choosing to tend his gear at the fire and listen to the rest of them talk during their evenings. He doesn’t speak up often, but Dorian watches him and it seems like he’s satisfied just with their company.

Three days after leaving the city, Orym silently gestures to the space beside Dorian at the fire, asking permission to sit. Opal is quiet, holding her necklace in one hand and circling the pad of her thumb over the surface of the stone there. Dariax will be on watch during the darkest hours of the night and has already fallen asleep between his pack and Opal’s.

“Yeah,” Dorian answers, scooting over on his spread cape to make room for Orym. He’d forgotten at some point how small Orym is, because the distance he’s made between them is wider than it strictly needs to be.

If Orym notices, he doesn’t say anything. He sets out his kit and starts working in methodical order, as though this is a well-practiced ritual he must observe. It’s been nearly three months and this is the first time Dorian has paid any attention.

“I don’t have a good feeling,” Orym tells him quietly, gently massaging oil into the leather of his armor, taking care with the detailed vines and leaves embossed across it. When he looks up at Dorian, his gaze is somber, but not hostile.

After nearly two weeks of unresolved tension, it’s a little bit of a relief that Orym is trying to confide his concerns in Dorian, maybe try and come up with a solution together. Dorian likes this more. Despite how confident the others seem to be in him, he doesn’t really want to be the only one responsible for making all of the decisions.

Dorian tries to make himself hold Orym’s stare, to do so without thinking about anything else. “I haven’t felt great about things since – maybe since Dariax had that dream.”

A soft grimace crosses Orym’s his face. “I know,” is all he says, but his eyes are as steady as ever when he looks over the others around the fire, lingering on each of them in turn with obvious fondness and fear.

“I don’t have any more answers than you do.” Dorian moves back toward the center of the cape so Orym’s shoulder brushes his bicep. Despite days in the jungle, Orym smells a little like a fresh spring breeze, sprouting earth and vetiver. It’s enchanting. Dorian had mistaken it for the smell of the Everdawn, but it’s just Orym himself.

Orym is smiling a little over his work when he says, “It wouldn’t be fair for me to think you do.”

“Maybe I’m not as frightened of the crown as you are, but I understand wanting to protect our friends.” They’re finally making peace here and Dorian knows he’s tempting fate by bringing up the source of their fights, but it seems like they’ll never get past it if he doesn’t.

Orym sets down his armor and stares ahead at the fire for a long time. So long that Dorian is sure he’s trying to avoid another fight by simply reverting to silence, and it – they can’t keep doing that. Then he packs up his oils and waxes, all the vials and small jars, pulls his knees close and rubs the heels of his hands into his eyes.

“Gilmore said the vestige was just power, too. I’d – I was so caught up in everything else. The Nameless Ones, the runes on the mesa, that creepy ship. I’d forgotten until Tetrarch Thrascuur said the same.”

Dorian feels a prickle in the base of his spine, a little like he’s losing sensation in his limbs. A little like a stab of triumph, to have been right. He crushes it and frowns. “Then you’re not afraid of it.”

“I still think we need to be very careful around that damned thing,” Orym says all at once, then huffs out another breath of air, as though he’s surprised by the intensity of his emotions. “It's powerful, and we – we definitely aren’t. I keep thinking of that other Fearne we saw. What would happen if one of us were given something we couldn’t control?”

Tell him.

This time, the syllables sound a little breathy in Dorian’s ears, making him shiver a little. He should tell him about the conversation with Lolth, about what he bargained – or didn’t, in the end. Dorian isn’t clear if he gave any part of himself away to her, or if he only compromised his principles.

“I should tell you,” he says, leaning a little toward Orym. “I talked to her. It was – I think it was a dream.”

Orym's face cycles through a few emotions, but none are surprise. Despite the certainty in his gut that he’s just struck the killing blow on their friendship, Orym doesn't look angry, either. He unfolds his hands from his knees at last and looks regretful, and it’s worse.

“I know you did.” He gestures a little to the corner of Dorian's mouth with his hand, hesitating a moment before wiping at it with his thumb and coming back with a thread of spider silk. “Although I don't know what it means. Do you think you can tell me?”

“I don’t know what it means, either.” Dorian hopes that he looks sincere to Orym, because he doesn’t know. He is being sincere, and it’s gutting him that Orym doesn’t trust him. “She gave me my memories from that week.”

At this, Orym’s eyes snap upward and the crease between his brows deepens. Troubled again and this time it’s Dorian who’s laid that weight on him. Orym only watches Dorian, but he doesn’t need to speak to say what it is he’s thinking.

Dorian mirrors Orym’s body language, pulling his knees to his chest and staring down at the fire. Dorian’s been miserable for the short time he’s known. What could he hope to accomplish by handing Orym a contradiction that might only make him feel terrible? Dorian doesn’t really know what it is Orym thinks about whatever happened to his husband, how he’ll feel knowing what he’s done.

At last, it’s Orym who clears his throat and asks him: “Did you remember anything important?”

“We met at the Everdawn, that festival in Emon, maybe a day or two before we met everyone else,” Dorian chances. “You seemed happier.”

In the warm glow of the firelight, Orym looks like he’s fighting a war against himself inside his own head, but when Dorian tries to hold the tension between then and now, the contradiction doesn’t seem to exist anymore. It’s just Orym he sees now: a complete person, flaws and all, like anyone else.

“I thought I knew what my future would be like,” he says, and Dorian tries not to notice that his voice is heavy. “I was obviously wrong.”

For a moment, Dorian considers letting it drop there. They’re talking again for the first time since he remembered everything, and the truth could break them all over again. Assuming he can even make Orym believe him. He knows immediately that he’s being a coward by trying to forestall something that’s inevitable for a moment of convenience.

“There’s more,” he says, reaching over into his pack with shaking hands. Dorian has only one piece of evidence to prove that his story is true, he’ll need it now. His journal is shoved into the bottom corner of the bag where Dorian futilely hoped its contents couldn’t haunt him.

Orym watches curiously as Dorian flips past pages of his looping script detailing his travels to Emon, the festival atmosphere of the city as it prepared for the Everdawn, the wide-eyed curiosity of the man he’d been back then.

There’s a faint blue stain on the blank pages of the journal when Dorian lifts the crown of flowers, holding it for the first time in months. It isn’t the same as it was that night and it isn’t perfect anymore. A few petals come loose and flutter away on the jungle breeze. A little messy, a little complicated now, just like Dorian. Just like everything else.

“You gave me this.” Dorian’s voice is shaking, and he forces himself to slow down, to collect himself before he adds, “At the end of the night we spent together.”

Dorian can’t make himself look Orym in the eye, so he only feels him stop moving completely, hears the sharp inhale he takes before he doesn’t breathe at all. It’s entirely silent but for the crackling of the fire, Dariax’s soft snores from the other side of their camp. Dorian has stopped breathing, too.

Waiting for the courage to look back at Orym’s face, to at least see what it is this news has done to him, Dorian stares at the blue flowers, as if they have some sort of answer. After the eternity a few heartbeats of silence makes, Orym reaches out and takes the crown from him, gingerly turns it over in his hands.

“I remember the Everdawn,” he says at last, slow and careful, as though unraveling a knot. One dried bloom falls from the crown and rests on Orym’s forefinger before blowing off toward Dorian, who catches it in his palm. “I remember the lights and flowers. This crowd of dancers spilling off into the streets from the central square. I don’t remember you. I don’t remember… being happy.”

Dorian closes the hand with the flower into a fist, holding it close to his chest when he makes himself look at Orym. "You wouldn't, of course. I barely – I'm sorry it took me this long to tell you."

Orym's throat bobs and he lifts his head to stare at the canopy above them. Warm light pools in the hollow of his throat, his neck exposed and lovely. Dorian hasn't seen him wearing anything like the expression he has now: yearning, hopeful and heartbroken. He doesn't need to ask to know that he's remembering, too, only Orym’s memories are of someone completely different. A different place and time entirely.

Dorian shoves away a vision of Orym's pale lashes fluttering open and focuses on now.

“I need a little time to – to think.” Orym’s hand is shaking when he uses Dorian’s shoulder to push up onto his feet. He searches Dorian’s face as if looking for a memory, for an explanation Dorian can't give him, rests the crown back in his hands and says, “Thank you for telling me.”

“Yes, of course,” Dorian answers immediately, looking down and away. “You’re my friend, Orym. Of course. I thought you should know.”

“I hope that I was. Happy, I mean.”

Dorian doesn’t have an answer to that. He only lowers his gaze back to his knees and stares down at the crown, pale as ashes against his skin. It shouldn’t feel like a door slamming in his face when Orym walks silently back to his bedroll, arms folded and head down. He had no hopes hung on this moment, no plans that are now tattered at his feet, no reason to feel the way he does at all.

The journey to take Opal home to Byroden stretches ahead of them ominously after Myr’atta Niselor is dead: close enough to be their goal, far enough to be daunting in their condition. Fearne carries Dariax on her back when he can’t walk, Orym limping along to guide them from the front, Dorian and Opal following at the back. They need more healing than the jungle can provide and Niirdal-Poc is too far for them to return, but they’re alive. Dorian tries to be grateful for that much.

It’s gratifying in a way Dorian isn’t familiar with to see Orym leading them, rather than feeling like he’s herding them. And he does lead them, though Dorian doesn’t think he realizes it. They follow clear streams of water through the jungle, past trees that grow so far into the sky that the epiphytes growing among their roots are as big as most of the ordinary trees Dorian has seen on Exandria. When the streams converge near a grove of the enormous trees sheltering the clearing from the elements, Dorian suggests they camp among the roots.

Dariax is a terrible patient, unwilling to rest when he should, impossibly energetic despite his wounds. Despite his good humor, Dorian senses that Dariax has been somehow changed along the way, because he asks Dorian to help him set up his bedroll next to Opal’s.

“Sort of feels like I’ve been carrying that thing around for so long, it makes sense for me to keep taking care of it now, right?” His soft eyes search for approval, but it seems to Dorian that Dariax is doing it out of habit. An old comfort that won't be much use to him soon, but Dorian helps him anyway.

Opal spends much of her time in thought, her conversations with Ted now private as the sisters decide what it is they want to do with themselves. She leans back-to-back with Dariax during the day, eyes closed and awake as he tells her stories about the world as he knows it. The circlet occasionally streams black ichor down her temples, but Dorian notices it only happens whenever she’s sitting by herself, when her thoughts get a little too loud to contain just inside her head.

Fearne takes her turn in the cycle of healing others and resting so she can do it again, keeping the fire going while making healing ointments she grinds from the flowers she wears and plants she finds in the jungle. Occasionally, she transforms into her direwolf form and curls around Opal and Dariax together, resting her head on her paws and staring past the treeline, waiting for something, or just watching.

On the rare occasion that they’re all awake, they talk about what it is they want to do next. The only consensus they have is that they’ll take Opal home for a while. She hasn’t asked again since Niirdal-Poc, but Dorian knows that it’s the only thing she and Ted want. The rest of them would never say no to her, and none of them really have any other plans.

On the second night, Orym announces he's going to check the area around the camp before taking his watch. He looks at Dorian long enough to lock eyes, then tucks his chin and picks up his sword without saying anything directly to him.

"I'll go with you," Dorian tells him, dusting off his hands and removing his scimitar from its place in his lute.

Fearne tracks their movement with wolfish eyes and gives a little snuffle that Dorian doesn’t know how to interpret. Mister stops brushing her tail with his fingers only long enough to look up at the two of them and give a little scream that wakes Dariax from a doze.

Orym waits at the edge of the clearing, eyes watching the jungle around them until Dorian comes up beside him. “You know you didn’t have to come,” he says when they fall into step together.

And – well, it’s definitely a little awkward, but less than it was after they fought. The collective fears of their group coming true is far worse than anything so minor as their interpersonal drama.

“I did need to. I needed a break from – well, and I like your company.”

Orym nods and struggles through a particularly thick patch of vines with a soft grunt of discomfort. “I won’t refuse company.”

Dorian wonders whether this is a recent development like Orym’s willingness to take charge because they need him to, or if he was only ever off on his own because no one asked. The likely answer doesn’t make Dorian feel especially good about himself, for never actually asking until recently. Orym seems naturally inclined to like people, to want to be around them even if he doesn’t have much to say.

“I’m not looking forward to going back to Byroden,” Orym finally sighs when they’re well beyond being heard back at the camp. He sounds deeply weary in a way that isn’t entirely explained by his recent wounds. “Going back to those nice people after we couldn’t save Opal or Ted.”

“But we did.” Dorian’s face drops into a frown. He resolutely doesn’t want to feel any worse about this situation than he already does, stomping through the jungle with a lover-turned-friend, his feelings for whom have only become more complicated. “Didn’t we?”

Orym looks up at him and doesn’t speak, pausing to examine some tracks in a nearby patch of moss with his lips pressed thin, as though he’s pained by something. He doesn’t say it, but regardless of the shine Dorian might try to put on it, they don’t really know whether they saved Opal and her sister or not. They barely understand what happened to them at all.

“You were right,” Dorian says when they start walking again, looking ahead of them with his scimitar held overhead to light the path ahead. “About the circlet. How we should have been more careful.”

Looking down at Orym, he finds him stopped a few feet behind, the tip of his sword resting against the earth and his eyes glowing in the pale light. He looks tremendously sorrowful when he says, “I wanted you to be right about it. I wish I’d been wrong.”

If it was anyone else saying so, it would make Dorian feel like they were salting the wound. Instead, Dorian knows that Orym means it, that he takes absolutely no pleasure in being right.

“Your instincts were good. We can’t do anything to change what’s already past.” For a moment, Dorian wonders if he’s accidentally started talking about some other past they can’t change. But they aren’t talking about that, not now, maybe not ever. He clears his throat and adds, “Opal will be grateful to be home. Ted isn’t enslaved to cultists. We should consider that a victory.”

“I didn’t think victory would feel like this.”

That brings a bitter laugh up from Dorian’s chest, because he did know. He’s known for a long time that there are no victories but bitter ones. Getting something you want might mean losing something else you value. Sometimes it means losing everything for the chance of something better. Dorian traded a bit of himself for these memories, and he doesn’t really know what it is he traded for this awkward, stumbling new beginning with Orym.

“I know you’re a paragon of good, Orym, but you’ve never once disappointed yourself?”

“Of course I have.”

Orym purposefully brushes him on the thigh with his left shoulder as he passes, a simple, fond gesture Dorian wouldn’t have even thought about a month ago. Now, though, Orym walks on to resume their work and Dorian’s heart is in his throat when he follows.

It’s difficult not to be impressed with this version of Orym: competent and focused, empathetic and kind. Dorian had thought he was magnificent before, astonishingly confident and self-assured, but it’s nothing like now. Nothing to actually knowing Orym, loving him, and knowing that he can only disappoint him.

Dorian has the complete thought, feels it snag on something in his chest. He sweeps his eyes along Orym’s form ahead of him in the darkness before it fully settles over him. Repeating it back to himself, Dorian looks for the thing that isn’t quite right. Yes, of course he loves Orym. He loves all of them.

Orym looks back over his shoulder to check on him with that soft, fond expression and it’s as if someone’s pulled the entire sky down over him, realizing it's not that kind of love.

It's not the same as anything he feels for any of the others. It's not the same at all.

The moments ahead unfold in Dorian's mind like a card tower toppling over. Orym will know what he’s just realized by the expression on his face. Everything Dorian has somehow managed to rebuild of their friendship, this precious and delicate thing, will break apart in his hands.

“Dorian.”

“It’s nothing.”

Orym doesn’t move, though, he just stares up at Dorian thoughtfully, as though he’s turning something over. Like he’ll remember if he only looks hard enough. Holding Orym’s gaze now feels more intimate than absolutely anything they did that night in Emon.

“What was it like?” he asks quietly.

“Good.” Dorian chokes on air, recovers by looking up to the night-black canopy above them. “It was good.”

Visibly relaxing, Orym says, “I worried I might not have – it’s been a long time. It might not have been good for you.”

“I wasn’t–” That Orym worried about whether or not it was good enough is so startling that Dorian laughs, covering his face with his free hand. He’s profoundly grateful to the darkness for covering his full-body flush when he adds, “I’m understating it a little.”

“I’m sorry I don’t remember.”

So is Dorian, but there’s nothing to be done about it, short of another soul-tainting deal. “We should finish checking things and head back,” he suggests instead.

“One more thing before we go,” says Orym, retracing his steps through the jungle back to Dorian, and he – Dorian had entirely forgotten how Orym can command his full attention, making him forget where they are or why. He can’t look anywhere but the luminescent glow of Orym’s eyes reflecting the light from Dorian’s blade. “I’m sorry for the trouble this has been for you.”

“It hasn’t been–”

“Dorian.” Orym’s eyebrows jump and Dorian closes his mouth immediately. “You should know that I don't regret doing it. Even if I can't remember, even if you don't want – it means something important to me that I felt ready then. I’m glad it was with you.”

“Then I will be glad, too.” It’s an insipid, pompous thing to say, the sort of thing that Dorian would have said in another life to evade an unwanted conversation rather than spare someone’s feelings. He’s kicking himself about it long after everyone has fallen asleep and Dorian is left staring at Orym while he sleeps, tucked into the roots of a nearby tree.

What he wants is that feeling he’d had the morning afterward to come back, the giddiness of something discovered about himself. He wants things to have been different. To have gotten the chance to choose what he and Orym were going to be to one another, rather than for it to be chosen for them.

It’s been easier to remember only the physical aspects of that night, the careless way they’d been so sure what it would mean. But there’s more that Dorian has tried to put out of mind, thinking that it offered him nothing of worth until now.

Being a lonely traveler was different than being alone at home. He hadn’t known anyone, hadn't recognized anything about this exhilarating world and its people. After a year of that, Orym was the first thing that felt familiar to Dorian. A night breeze carried that smell like spring renewal to him and Dorian saw him with flowers in his hair and lantern light glowing on his skin. Being alone for as long as he had been, there hadn’t ever been a question that he intended to meet him, to know him, whatever that meant for the two of them.

He’d been astonished to find he was right about Orym. Among all the people Dorian met during those lonesome months, some good and some not, Orym was the first who seemed to see him. Not Dorian Storm the bard, and not the person he left behind with his parents and brother. Just himself.

That first, golden moment shines in Dorian’s memory now, of the way things might have been before crowns of flowers and crowns of thorns. When he’d simply seen him and wondered if they were alike in some way that mattered.

They were. They are. And in remembering all the rest, Dorian had somehow forgotten that singularly important thing.

On the fourth day, Dorian decides it’s not Dariax who’s a terrible patient.

Distracted by Opal’s existential crisis and the severity of Dariax’s wounds, the constant cycle of healing and resting so he can recover enough of his magic to keep going, and his own personal angst, Dorian had forgotten just how severe Orym’s wounds were. It’s been days since he’s had any healing at all. Not since the day they left that cursed clearing.

Orym is doing the thing where he makes himself fade behind other people’s needs and Dorian is furious with himself for falling for it again.

Stalking through the jungle with a clinking satchel of Fearne’s tinctures and ointments, Dorian considers whether Orym was always this obstinate or if this is a recent development because of the four of them. It doesn’t feel good to think that he brings out the worst in Orym, but – well, even the worst of Orym isn’t all that bad.

He’s still mentally walking himself through all of Orym’s wounds from that last fight when he comes up short on a break in the trees and hears the sound of water. Beyond the last curtain of foliage, he can see the outline of a large pool filled by a dramatic waterfall at least twenty feet high. Dorian pushes aside the greenery and finds himself standing on the smooth, basalt rim of the pool. On the ground near the edge are Orym’s clothes, his breeches and shirt neatly folded on top of his chest plate, boots and gloves stacked to support his sword and shield.

It takes several seconds for Dorian to put together the evidence in front of him and realize what is happening. It’s the same amount of time it takes for him to see Orym facing the falls, waist-deep in the water, dappled sunlight lifting the gold from the waves of his hair.

Orym tips his head back and the light reaches his face, illuminates the freckles across his nose and down his shoulders. Months before, in a completely different scenario, Dorian memorized the way his tattoo unfurls over his shoulder and down toward his chest, but it’s different in this light. More fluid.

He’s never had the chance to pay that much attention to how Orym’s tattooed skin moves over the lean, ropey muscles of his arms and chest, but he does now. Far from Dorian’s physique, which is as much about aesthetics as anything, Orym’s body is built to be functional. It hits him like lightning from a blue sky, remembering just how functional Orym’s body is.

Despite the ringing warning in his ears that he should leave Orym to his privacy, that he’s about to step into something he can’t turn back from, Dorian stares. Each of Orym’s movements rolls into the next as Orym steps under the falls with his face turned up and his hands held wide. Below where his tattoo ends with a flourish, his nipples are dark and tight from the cold water and there’s a soft patch of hair just beneath his abdomen, between his hip points angled downward to the dark shadow just beneath the water.

It isn’t like seeing him for the first time at all, because every detail is familiar to Dorian. Instead, it’s like seeing him as he was meant to be. It’s the first thing that’s completely drowned out the constant reminders of fucking Orym in Emon, and it’s only because Dorian wants nothing more than to fuck him again, wants Orym to finally fuck him. The raw wanting leaves him quite literally breathless. He’s forgotten to bother with breathing and now doesn’t dare to for fear it will disturb the tableau set before him.

What he should do is leave for the camp and wait for Orym to come back before checking his wounds. He should look away and leave Orym to his bath, let things settle a little from their conversation only two nights ago. There are at least a dozen other things Dorian ought to do, but he only watches as Orym dips beneath the water and scrubs his hands over his body in clipped, efficient motions.

As Dorian watches, it becomes apparent to him that Orym is stiffer than he should be, that those fluid movements should be smoother than they are. Whenever he lifts his arms, there’s a momentary stutter in his right arm, where his shield hadn’t adequately covered his shoulder. A grimace rises when he touches his ribs. Bruises in shades of red and blue tell the story of the battle only a few days ago, but there are older ones in yellow and mauve scattered over his body. They are the physical testimony of just how hard Orym fights to protect the rest of them.

It’s that revelation that finally animates Dorian again, reminding him why he’s here at all. He didn’t traipse through the jungle looking for Orym just to look at him. Turning his back to the pool, Dorian begins laying out a few of the ointments and fresh bandages that he made from one of his spare shirts. He’s dressed only in his breeches and a loose, linen shirt to keep the sticky humidity of the jungle off of him, but he feels overly-sensitive and hot as he works.

He’s almost done when he hears a splash behind him, turns and sees Orym standing in waist-deep water some ten feet away. Dorian lifts his chin and examines the shoulder wound pointedly, anything to avoid looking Orym in the face right now, knowing that all of his clothes are next to Dorian.

If he’s embarrassed to be found naked in the pool, Orym doesn’t show it. Traveling together means that night in Emon wasn’t even the only time they’ve been naked together. He gestures with his left hand to the things Dorian brought with him. “What’s this?”

“I noticed the other night that your shoulder is hurting you and Fearne reminded me you haven’t had any healing for a few days.” Dorian gestures to Orym’s clothes. “If you want to put on your pants, I can clean things up for you. Make sure it’s healing right.”

“Oh.” When Dorian looks up at that clipped off syllable, Orym’s face is creased, somewhere between guilty and bullheaded. He doesn’t try to hide it from Dorian when their eyes meet. “How are Dariax and Opal?”

“They’re fine,” Dorian insists, seeing the deflection for what it is. “I don’t want to see that go bad because we weren’t paying attention.”

“It’s healing well.” Orym’s face relaxes and Dorian realizes then that he won’t outright walk away from this conversation, but that he won’t acquiesce, either. He’ll make himself a wall of stone and good sense until he convinces Dorian that it’s everyone else who needs healing first.

“Orym,” he says, low and serious. Dorian means for it to sound like the start of a serious conversation about this self-defeating tendency to set himself apart from the others, but it doesn’t come out that way at all.

Dorian’s face heats almost before he sees the pink flush along the back of Orym’s neck, spreading to overtake the tips of his ears. In the planning stages of this excursion, Dorian hadn’t once thought what it would be like for him to be close and touching Orym’s body again. He should have asked Fearne to do this, but he’s here now. It’s already going to be a problem for him to torture himself over later.

Dorian bends down to unlace his boots and roll up the cuffs of his breeches. The black stone is smooth and sun-warm under his feet but Dorian walks to the edge of the pool and sits down with the water rising up over his knees, so shockingly cold that he gasps, “You’re swimming in this?”

“It helps with the inflammation.”

Dorian holds out one hand, pulling deep from his magic for a healing spell that glows uncast on his fingertips. “Gods, just – come here so I can make sure you’re actually healing right.”

Theirs is a group entirely unperturbed by the conventions of dignified modesty that Dorian is more accustomed to back home, and it’s obviously not the first time they’ve been this close. Remembering exactly how smooth Orym’s skin feels under Dorian’s wandering hands has been the problem for weeks now.

Remembering and doing are different, something that becomes instantly apparent when Orym obeys and stands in front of him. The water is pure and clear, and Dorian doesn’t dare look down. He almost doesn’t dare touch Orym at all, already afraid he might bolt from sheer panic.

This is foolish. Dorian is in love with Orym, near obsessing about how good, how right it had been the one time they were together. He thought he could just come here and get this over with? It would be laughable, except–

Well, except that now that Dorian is this close to Orym, it’s immediately apparent that Orym needs a healer. The stab wound in his shoulder is closed, but feels blazing hot in spite of the frigid water he’s been bathing in. Hotter than the rest of Orym feels, anyway. Left any longer, Orym might have caught a fever, might have been much worse off than he’s playing it off as. And he would have never said a word of complaint.

Dorian tries to focus on when his fingertips graze Orym’s tattooed shoulder, feels the spell release and instantly begin its work. Healing magic isn’t always transactional. It doesn’t always give Dorian any insight into how the beneficiary is doing, but this time he tries to find all the little places where Orym is still hurting. From that, he knows that this is probably the worst of Orym’s wounds, although one of his ribs is at least bruised. It’s the third one down on the left, just over his heart. Dorian tries focusing his magic toward it next, his eyes scanning Orym’s face and chest for signs of anything else that needs attention.

Orym’s eyes close, his jaw tightening in opposition to the relief he’s surely feeling from being healed. He only endures a few seconds of contact before raising his bad arm to push Dorian’s hand off, gritting out, “That’s enough.”

The brush off never connects once Orym blinks open his eyes. Instead, he freezes with his hand hovering next to Dorian’s, his brow wrinkled in the middle, an astonished expression as though he’s found something he’s been searching for.

Dorian releases him instantly, the blue-white glow of arcane energy still hovering around his hand when he dismisses it with a shake. They’re of a height like this and the jumble of memory and present reality has Dorian feeling disoriented, trying to keep hold on what’s real and what isn’t. Orym’s mouth is parting in a question or leaning in to kiss him, caught between his curious expression and a memory of unguarded longing. There’s what’s past and there’s now, and the space between the two is nonexistent.

Dorian is kissing him before he realizes that it isn’t merely the memory of another kiss, that he smells the intense greenery of the jungle and not the perfume of flowers all around. Orym’s arms have wound their way around his neck, an eager moan vibrating between them at the place where they’re pressed together. Dorian’s shirt soaks in the water from Orym’s chest, but he doesn’t feel the cold anymore. For a fleeting second, he smells flowers everywhere and then not at all.

Orym may not remember doing this, but some part of him must: his fingertips tease the sensitive cartilage around Dorian’s piercings, dragging out an irrepressible shudder. His hands find the same place in Dorian’s hair, holding him in place as Dorian feels like a flower blooming for him. It has all the same opulence as their first kisses, as though the past months were the dream and this is the real thing.

Dorian breaks first, rests his hands on a respectful part of Orym’s hips, shirtsleeves trailing across the surface of the water. Folded up with his forehead resting on Dorian’s chest, Orym is breathing like he’s just run a race.

“I should have asked first,” Dorian says, rolling forward to rest his ear on Orym’s hair and remembering – gods, how is it that they did so much in one night so as to overshadow anything else they might do now?

“We’ve done this.” Orym sounds astonished. It’s the sort of thing that might be affronting if anyone else said it, as though he’s admitting that he thought Dorian lied. He doesn’t mean that at all, though, because Orym sits back and his eyes sketch over Dorian’s face and he knows that expression, knows that feeling. It’s the sensation of something just beyond remembering, when all he can hold is the abstract shape of a thing while searching for the details which define it.

Firm, calloused fingers curl around Dorian’s shirt and Orym pulls him down into another kiss, and it’s finally, finally different than anything Dorian remembers.

Orym’s mouth is hard and urgent, testing whether this is the thing that might unlock the things he can’t quite remember. It feels like trying to catch up with him when Dorian tightens his fingers on Orym’s hip, hard enough that it may add a few bruises to the ones marring Orym’s soft skin. He pretends not to notice the stiffness of Orym's erection hot on his stomach, but it’s impossible. If Dorian thought he was uncomfortable in his clothes before, it's nothing to how intolerable they feel now, wet and ill-fitted and in the way.

Orym leans back onto Dorian’s knees, breaking the kiss with obvious reluctance. “I’m trying to–”

“You think kissing me is going to make you remember?”

“When you put it like that,” Orym laughs, but the furrow between his eyebrows is still there. Stretching, extending, trying. “I suppose it only works that way in bedtime stories.”

Dorian pulls Orym back to him, cradling his face between his hands and kissing him, hoping it’s enough to make Orym feel as secure and treasured as he makes Dorian feel. Like a fresh rendering of an old song, they chase something familiar, change it as soon as it feels the same, and start over again. Orym yields when Dorian expects him to take control, sighs rather than moans when Dorian’s hands skirt carefully past the bruises on his ribs, and it’s different again. It may be that Orym will never remember at all, but they can make something new out of what they have.

It takes coordinated effort from both of them to get Dorian’s wet shirt off of him. His breeches are skin-tight now and though there’s no particular dignity in getting them off, Orym’s eyes are bright with desire watching Dorian shimmy them off.

“I didn’t come here to–”

It somehow feels important to tell Orym that he didn’t come here to ogle and seduce him, but Orym just laughs, feeling along the hard planes of his chest with unrestrained curiosity. “Do you want to?”

“Look at us,” Dorian laughs, unbearably in love, curling down to steal another kiss from Orym. “You’re the only person I know who would ask me that when I’m already yours.”

“Are you?” Orym’s eyes lift with that soft fondness, the aching sincerity that belies just how romantic he is beneath his steady intensity.

“Since the first time I saw you. You told me your name and I–”

“–said you’d like how it sounded when I fuck you.” Orym’s eyes are a little unfocused, glazed with something Dorian could easily mistake for desire alone, but he knows is something else. Remembering.

Remembering.

Dorian startles with incredulity, thinking of a hundred other flash memories more beautiful and romantic for Orym to have remembered when he asks, “That’s what you remember?”

“I don’t remember whether I did or not.” And it isn’t fair how sensible Orym looks when he turns Dorian’s face back down to his, steady and familiar again. At the shake of Dorian’s head, he pushes up into another kiss and says, ”Then why don’t we find out?”

A rocky pool in the Rifenmist isn’t the ideal place for this, not compared to a soft bed strewn with flowers in Emon. It doesn’t just happen, even as eager for each other as they are. Wanting alone doesn’t fix everything. Falling in love isn’t necessarily the balm to heartbreak.

It’s worth it, but sometimes happily ever after takes a little effort.

Dorian doesn’t have his cloak to cover the hard basalt, so they find a shady patch of damp moss near the treeline. Dorian slips and goes down so hard it knocks him breathless for a moment, although it could just as easily be from the kiss Orym lays on him the moment Dorian’s head is pillowed on a root. In his eagerness, Dorian’s hand touches the tender part of Orym’s rib cage and he feels him stiffen with a wave of pain, whispering apologies whenever they can bear to pull apart, or else whenever Orym remembers that he still needs to breathe.

Despite knowing from the beginning that it was supposed to be the affair of a single night, their time in Emon had felt endless. It was the sort of thing where they could easily afford to take risks, spend an age just kissing a stranger, make and break promises, and never give even a passing care to what it might mean to face that person again in the morning.

This feels eager and desperate, like they’re running out of time even though they have as long as they want. Their lives together stretch ahead of them, broad and unknown, except for this one small thing: they could spend it together for as long as they choose. And still Dorian can’t get enough time, can’t get enough of the way the humidity makes their skin stick together, the clumsy way his hair gets trapped beneath his shoulder blades and Orym has to pull it free before they can keep going. No amount of time they spend kissing feels like enough, even though he does want to try to see what else there is.

Their kisses get slower, the sort that needs no imagination to be lewd. That’s the point Orym peels away, drops one last kiss on his mouth, then his chin, his jaw, the little dip just behind Dorian’s ear lobe. Dorian catches Orym’s chin to draw him into another kiss, but he shrugs him off, moving down until his teeth graze Dorian’s nipple. It’s too much at first – too sharp, too intense – and then he closes his mouth over the tight bud, drags the flat of his tongue over it, and it’s right.

It isn’t until Orym’s tongue dips into his navel that Dorian realizes what it is he’s planning, catches him by the shoulders with shaking hands and hauls him back up for another kiss. “Not this time,” Dorian mumbles into Orym’s mouth, feels Orym inhale so sharply it literally steals his breath.

It isn’t until then that Dorian gives much thought to what it is they’re going to do here, lets himself form the thought that this is a terrible moment for Orym to fuck him. Everything about it is wrong, from their injuries to the location, and that somehow makes it right. It could also be he’s insensible from wanting this, wanting Orym for as long as he has.

“Hand me that bag,” he says, reaching blindly over his head. “I think there’s oil.”

Orym hesitates mid-reach, his chest muscles stretching and flexing directly in front of Dorian’s face, but he pulls it down and sets it near Dorian’s hand. “Do you know what Fearne put in it?”

“No idea.” Maybe he did at some point, but he can barely think. Dorian pulls out a pair of colorful vials, barely confirming that they’re oil before pressing both into Orym’s hands. “These are probably fine.”

Orym’s eyebrows jump, but he sits back on Dorian’s stomach, uncapping a vial of oil roughly the same shade as the moss beneath them and examines it carefully. Dorian just stares at him, taking in Orym’s bare chest, the golden brown hair he’d admired before stretching down between his legs, his cock jutting upward. He’s seen it all before, but not the scattering of freckles along the shaft, nor the twitch of obvious interest when Orym catches him looking.

“Well, the green one would have probably given you hallucinations, maybe sent you to a completely different plane,” he pronounces, setting it aside in favor of the vial of faintly shimmering gold oil. “This one’s fine, if you don’t mind that it will probably make you a little giddy.”

Dorian starts to tell him that he’s already giddy, then catches Orym’s shy smile and his stomach twists, realizing he’s making a joke. It’s hardly the first time, and it’s always in that dry tone, but it makes Dorian’s heart jump and he crushes him against his chest for another kiss that steals a few more minutes from the indeterminable eternity they now have.

It’s absolutely no surprise that Orym is gentle and attentive in preparing him, his eyes fixed on Dorian’s face, completely ignoring himself as he does. It’s a different kind of intensity, but Dorian squirms under it all the same as Orym works him up. Orym pauses when the burn is too much, twists when he finds the place that makes Dorian’s vision blur for a few intense seconds, and spends far more time making sure he’s ready than he’d given himself when they did this in Emon.

When he’s satisfied, Orym cleans his hand and climbs onto Dorian’s chest to kiss himself breathless one last time.

“Last chance. Do you still want this?” he asks, and Dorian’s only answer is to snag his lower lip between his teeth. Orym reflexively rolls his hips down against him, unsuccessfully choking back a surprised cry. “Okay. That’s yes?”

“Yes.” Dorian moves his hair out of the way again, spreading it over the thickest part of the moss cushion while Orym rolls their clothes into a neat cylinder. He’s just about to tease him for being fastidious at a time like this, when they’re about to fuck in a forest, and then Orym taps his thigh, encouraging him to lift up so he can slide it beneath his hips. It’s the sort of thoughtful detail when Dorian hadn’t given any thought to how this would work that is inexplicably charming, something only Orym might have thought of.

His hand gripping himself at the base of his cock, Orym pushes his knees apart and kneels in front of him, one hand steadying himself on the inside of Dorian’s thigh. He looks more vulnerable than Dorian is, spread open for him in a clearing, his eyes scraping over Dorian’s entire body before landing on his face, his mouth open as if there’s something he’s going to say.

It had been easier somehow, the first time, not knowing exactly what it is this means to Orym. That this is the first time for him and it means something that he wants to do it. That he wants to do that with Dorian. They don’t linger there long, staring at each other and trying to memorize this moment as if it might be taken away, too.

There’s no sting when Orym pushes into him, except from the blunt half-moons he’s digging into Dorian’s thigh, his breath coming in shallow pants. The wound in his shoulder isn’t an angry red anymore, but he hadn’t given Dorian enough time to fully heal him the way he probably needs.

“Take it slow,” Dorian warns quietly. “I don’t want you to–”

“Don’t overthink it,” Orym interrupts, entirely without irony.

Dorian drops his head back to laugh, but gasps instead when Orym starts to move in shallow rolls of his hips that grow longer, but never faster. Orym pauses just long enough to bend forward and kiss his bare stomach, his thumb drawing slow circles on the sensitive, ticklish part of Dorian’s thigh. Then he tucks his head down, shifts Dorian’s weight by an inch, somehow manages to sink deeper.

“Orym.” His name comes out uneven and Dorian takes a breath, tries again more urgently, “Orym.”

“I know what I said,” Orym manages, his gaze snapping up toward Dorian’s face, obviously fighting to regain control of his breathing. “But if you keep saying my name like that, I’m not – fuck, Dorian.”

There’s a single instant when Dorian thinks he won’t get to see Orym’s face as he comes, extends one hand even though he can’t reach from this position. Orym grabs it immediately, folding his fingers between Dorian’s, holding eye contact even when the first spasm of his release hits. His climax is quietly enchanting: Orym’s lips forming unspoken words, squeezing Dorian’s hand, lifting it to his mouth for a kiss.

“Hang on,” Orym whispers, resting his forehead against their hands until his breathing steadies again. “I just need–”

Dorian is still desperately hard, which he knows undermines his sincerity when he says, “You don’t need to do anything.”

Orym looks him over with his eyebrows lifted, rests one hand on Dorian’s thigh and brings their clasped hands to wrap around the base of Dorian’s cock. Then he rolls his hips with an undeniably smug smile and Dorian realizes that he’s still hard, that Orym’s drawn from some reserve he only uses in battle. “No?”

“You’re unbelievable,” he answers without thinking, feeling something snap next to his head and this time Dorian does laugh. He’s still laughing moments later, when he comes in messy streaks over both of them, shouting Orym’s name until he feels his voice break.

The moss isn’t the most comfortable place to lie out, but Dorian is still staring up at the trees above his head when Orym kneels beside him again, carrying a few strips of linen that Dorian recognizes as his bandages. They’re damp and warm when Orym begins washing Dorian with his head down.

“I can use magic for that,” he offers, still lying flat on the ground. His throat feels scratchy, there’s a broken stick tangled in his hair, and they’re both filthy.

“Let me.” When he’s finished, Orym kneels next to Dorian’s chest. His lower lip is swollen and has a faint, purple tint to it that suggests a rising bruise, but he pulls Dorian back for another kiss anyway. The fingers combing through Dorian’s hair come back with fragrant, crushed leaves, and a few more twigs.

The sounds of the jungle drown out everything else for a while: the waterfall crashing into the shallow pool nearby, vibrant birds screaming in the trees, insects humming overhead. Then Orym’s voice is so soft that Dorian almost feels it vibrating against his chest more than he hears it: “Was it like that?”

“Fucking you in Emon?” Dorian laughs again, dropping his head back into the moss, not caring if they go back to the others looking an obvious mess. “That’s a more complicated question than you think. There were more flowers, fewer–” Pulling a leaf from his hair, Dorian holds it up to Orym with his mouth twitching with a smile. “It was good, but we were strangers.”

Orym goes quiet again, the blunt edge of his fingernails tracing patterns not unlike his tattoo into Dorian’s chest. “Strangers or not,” he finally says. “I hope that you made me as happy as I am now.”

It’s not a confession of love, per se, but Dorian knows what it means all the same. Whatever the future may be, the carved ruts on either side of a road or a crossroads with many different destinations, Dorian knows what his will be. It’s complicated and it’s messy, but – well, so is everything else.

Happily ever after is a thing worth working toward.

Right now, happy is so much more than enough.