Who:Dorian & Hunter What: Reveal When: Backdated to group-plot end. Notes: *falls over dead.*
Dorian slid an arm out of his silk dressing gown and watched the proliferation of bruises disappear from his white skin. He didn't have a mirror readily at hand - for such a vain man, there was still only one, and it didn't hang in his library. There was only sensation for the things he couldn't see. The many wounds didn't trouble him; he lifted his fingers for the strange sensation of his lip, formerly split cleanly against his teeth, perhaps, knitted under now-unbroken skin, and he felt a pressure in his nose as if it was realigning, though he had felt it, and the damage was not there. The bruises that remained were painful (Dorian felt pain as keenly as the next man) but it passed, and eventually Dorian was whole once more. He smiled to himself, and pulled up the dressing gown so it settled evenly on his shoulders, falls of firefly sink in the dark.
The staff was still asleep, a good thing as he desired some solitude while he grilled Hunter on his bruise-acquiring activities the night previous, and he was planning on relishing the discussion. Dorian and Hunter were hardly ever of the same mind, but they shared a certain mind space that they used for neutrality and communication, leaving both room to withdraw when they inevitably quarreled. Hunter was usually the one that demanded Dorian go away when in the desert, though Hunter was sometimes intrigued by this sooty, old-fashioned city that Dorian inhabited like a snake in a pit, and watched through the immortal's eyes when he thought Dorian wasn't paying attention. Dorian had nothing to hide, and it was only Hunter's bashful sensibility that parted them (in Dorian's mind, at any rate) so Dorian felt comfortable putting his feet up by the dying fire and addressing his counterpart silently.
I don't suppose you were doing anything fun, Dorian asked. I didn't have occasion to find a partner that suited me... which is a foul trick, I must say.
Those look like fun kind of bruises to you? I got my face bashed in. Hunter sounded nervous, evasive, but also bitter and angry. Dorian sensed that Hunter had been prey to his weaknesses, and though they were many, Dorian imagined that Hunter was probably exactly the kind of directionless creature he so feared to become, something disgusting, something grasping and unwanted. The immortal found that more amusing than pitiable.
Dorian indicated the journal lying on a small carved table to one side. Your little lover is worried about you. Or perhaps more worried that you had fun. Are you worried he had fun?
Hunter knew when he was being baited, but he could never resist. He wouldn't.
Well you ran around and got yourself "bashed," didn't you?
Hunter seethed. It wasn't the same. I was stealing stuff.
Dorian raised two perfect eyebrows. "Stuff?" he asked aloud, smiling. "You only had interest in 'stuff'?" Hunter hesitated, which amused Dorian even more. "Envy," Dorian said, aloud still, even to an empty room. "Is never just about 'stuff.'"