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nathan rothstein is dorian's (grayfaust) wrote in doorslogs, @ 2012-07-07 20:28:00

Who: Dorian, Jules, and later Violet.
What: Chats across a door.
Where: Passages
When: Recently.
Warnings/Rating: Safe, mostly. Vague sexual allusions, no more.

Jules knew this was the damn foolest idea he'd ever had himself. The anonymous man hadn't actually needed to ask him about not telling Loren, because if Loren knew what Jules was up to, well, chances were real high that Loren would just plain lock him in a basement for the rest of his living life. And Jules couldn't even argue against that being real logical, because this thing he was doing, it was playing with flames, and he knew that real well. Now, Jules, he wasn't real fond of burning, and he didn't even have a clear idea why he was doing what he had, not beyond wanting it all to end. Meredith was gonna get herself killed at this rate, and Loren was going to end up losing his damn mind, and Jules wasn't real sure he wanted to be there for any of that happening. So maybe it was self-preservation, because he was fond something fierce of Loren, but he had a feeling he wouldn't like the side of Loren that came calling if that murderer managed to kill himself another girl on Loren's watch.

So Jules went to Passages, dressed in the white dress pants he'd been planning on wearing out that night, and a cherry wife beater. He had candy-pink boots on his feet, and he had his hair loose around his shoulders and down between his shoulder blades. He had cherry gloss on his lips, and he smelled like sweetgrass and lemon, and he wondered if he'd be getting buried in these pants; he sure as heck hoped not, even if they did make his ass look real sweet.

When Jules got to the door, he stopped, and he knocked, like it was someone's house and not some damn thing that defied every rule of the universe. But, heck, if the strangest thing that happened this week was knocking on a door in Passages, he'd take it as a blessing and go on about his business. He wondered, belatedly, if he should have brought something to use as a weapon, but it was too late for that. And, hell, Jules wouldn't know the right side of a gun if his sweet little life depended on it. He was just counting on not being wrong about this anonymous man. And he was counting on Violet to drag him through a door - any door - before he could get himself dead, if he was wrong.

Considering his resistance to age and damage, Dorian was being excessively cautious about his anonymous identity on the journals. It was not in his nature to hide what he was, not really, and he’d settled for writing in his off hand and hiding behind an admittedly thin veil. He suspected his manner of speech and writing, even atrocious as it was, already went a long way toward revealing who and what he was, but all that really mattered was that Nathan did not make the connection. “Antique” certainly made him very angry, but he never imagined Dorian would dare.

Desperation makes cowards brave men, however. Dorian grew ever more bitter and horrified by Nathan with every act of violence, every misguided, twisted little thought, every plan and depraved imagining. He had little opinion of himself, but he would never dream of tracking humans like animals and intentionally tormenting them in such a way. Dorian’s nature was all selfish: upright hopes and the use of people only to make himself feel better, not to inflict suffering so deliberately. Being in Nathan’s mind made him feel sick, as if his very flesh was disintegrating. It was like being his portrait, his true appearance.

Dorian’s door was sturdy, wood so red and heavy that centuries of blood would never be able to replicate that brown stain, fine grains twisting fingerprint swirls into the six panels. The hinges needed oil and yet gleamed at the same time, and a sawed screech cut out as Dorian slid the door open about an inch, and then stopped. One eye the color of wet ink appeared, surveying the hall. He slid the door open still more, and presented a face smooth of expression, ivory shaped with a sharp knife and shaved into fine elegance at the center of his eyes and the bow of his lips. He was wearing a dressing gown in something of the recently popular Japanese style, white cranes sliding away from endless swamp in the blackest blue silk. In one elegant china hand a stub of white cigarette emitted a faint trail of opium-scented tobacco.

To Dorian, Jules looked like he was dressed for the freak show, the circus, the strange pink shoes and transparency of his clothes hinting at bizarre delights Dorian misunderstood in his anachronistic way. There was nothing of Dorian’s appearance that even hinted he was disturbed by anything or anyone in the entirety of his life. Such was the nature of the painting and the man. He raised one eyebrow.

Jules wasn't expecting anything real specific. He had no expectations of what this man would be like, but he sure didn't expect something out of Gone With the Wind, which was the closest thing he had to compare the man standing behind the dark wood door to. He wanted to ask, all of a sudden, if he was come to the right place, but that was plain stupid, and Jules just stepped back until his shoulders pressed against that wallpaper that crinkled worse than his momma's old living room wallpaper had. Those had been all yellow canaries gone white and faded, but this was dark and crumbling, and he wondered that he'd never looked at it long enough to really go and notice it. But it wasn't important then, not beyond the security of distance between himself and the man in Rhett Butler's robe.

Now, Jules wasn't this side of stupid; he knew there was nothing stopping that man from striding into the hallway, turning into that killer Jules was just starting to remember recent, and strangling Jules right there. He swallowed all kinds of nervousness on account of that, and he tipped his head to the side when Rhett quirked a brow. "That cigarette ain't a clove," he said, which seemed strange as a greeting, but it would do. "It's sweet, like a clove, but it ain't a clove." And Jules didn't smoke, on account of it being real bad for his voice, but there it was. Jules' voice was of indeterminate gender, just like his long willowy limbs were, like his sculpted cheekbones. He would fit in on any catwalk these days, but he was sure the man in the doorway hadn't ever heard of a catwalk.

"You're looking at me like I'm from outer space, honey, when you're the one looks like you just left Tara for the afternoon," Jules informed the dark-haired man. Jules favored his men rough, tumble, real masculine and just this side of straight, but even he had to admit this was plain pretty, this man gandering back at him.

Dorian understood half of that, no more, no less. He managed a quizzical expression without so much as a line creasing his face, and lifted one thumb bent back to its extreme to comb some of the soft brown hair out of his eyes. It tangled in the thick lashes. He looked over his shoulder back at the room behind him, a vaguely rectangular, close-quartered library with hints of dusty wood and clutter. The gaslights glinted off glass cases without betraying their insides, and Dorian didn’t move enough to give a proper view of the room.

He leaned against the doorframe without coming any nearer to Jules. Dorian too was slender, but Jules glowed with a powder youth that Dorian was too old now to keep in the deep dark of his eyes. Perhaps in his face the ivory held traces of health and vitality, but these were things of painting, magic and masks. He pressed his vulnerable mouth together and waved the cigarette in the air in front of him. A soft ‘S’ compressed and then slid away. “Opium,” he said. “Imported from Cairo. Would you like one? Who is... ‘Tara’?”

"Opium," Jules repeated, like maybe saying it again would help the man in the doorway understand just what he'd said. "You're talking like the drug? Because that's all kinds of illegal, honey," he said, his pale blue gaze dropping slow as anything to the cigarette in Dorian's hand. There was no question that he was curious, and that sweet smoke smelled like something heavenly, but there was still the matter of his voice. And, truth was, he didn't discount this man trying to drug him so he could kill him. Jules knew it was paranoid, but he blamed it all on Hannah getting herself killed while Violet was controlling her. "I don't smoke," he finished, and there was something all church on Sunday in the telling, like he wasn't lying even a smidgen, even if the whole truth wasn't in it.

Jules didn't see all those signs of age in the man in the doorway. He saw money, loaded, as his momma would say, and he saw trouble. Not the bad kind, not the kill you and dump you in the desert kind, but trouble. Jules had been with enough men to know that look, to know the rakes from clear across the room. He knew, too, that there wasn't nothing better than a tumble with this kind of man, but he knew it didn't last, neither, not past morning shine. "Tara's this big old house in a movie about a woman who ain't real nice, but who's real good at going after what she wants. It never works out particularly sweet, but it's an old movie, and the bad folks couldn't win then."

Dorian listened, the smoke curling up around the sapphire sleeve and then up to wreathe his features in soft fog. He seemed fascinated by this long telling, the quizzical expression soothing to a heavy-lidded quirk of his expression, as if leaning forward into the words. His smile was certainly one of someone smoking what he was smoking, but he seemed alert enough, if languid. He laughed, and the sound was like diamonds glittering in coal. “It’s not illegal. They sell them. You see?” He fished in one of his pockets with his long delicate fingers and pulled out a small paper package, much smaller than modern cigarettes. It was tinted in pale pink and had the profile of an effeminate-looking gentleman in a top hat on it. The box proclaimed that the contents were hand-rolled in Egypt and had ‘medicinal’ effects. A small trading card was lodged inside to separate the two rows of cigarettes, which smelled strongly of dried leaves and tar along with the sweetness of the opium.

Dorian smiled a sweet, boyish smile. “Ah, movies. I know of those. Like a play, but with the pictures moving. Tara is the name of a house, you say?” He put the cigarette between his lips and drank in the boy’s appearance, starting with his middle and moving up, then down.

Jules came closer to look at the pink box of cigarettes, but he didn't come too close, not close enough for an arm to snake out and grab without him seeing it coming. "You realize that's a queen on your box of smokes?" he asked, his smile real entertained, real genuine. That wasn't a box of manly Marlboro Reds the man was holding. Maybe they were like them women's long cigarettes, them Virginia Slims, which made Jules smile just to think about it. He wondered if men in Rhett's time just frankly didn't give a damn about how queer they looked, or if looking queer just wasn't a thing then. "It might not be illegal through that door, but opium's real illegal in this hallway." And for all Jules' pushing barriers, he didn't want to get himself arrested. He wouldn't do good in jail, and he sure didn't look pretty in orange.

"Yeah, like a play, but with moving pictures. Tara's this big old mansion. Back home, in the South, there's these big old white houses with two floors and wrap-around porches. Like them," he said, as if everyone knew what antebellum homes looked like, or as if they should. Jules had always wanted one for his self, but then everyone down South did. He paused. "You got a name?"

Dorian didn’t move during the presentation of the cigarettes, and slowly pocketed the box again when Jules made no attempt to reach for one of his own. “No,” he said, quite seriously. “There are others with the Queen on the cover. Victoria’s.” Missing Jules’ meaning by a mile he nodded seriously but also smiled slightly, sorting through the thick syrup of Jules’ accent without hearing any of his own clipped vowels. “Why would these be illegal?” he asked, curiously, exhaling a sinful spiral of the whitish sweet smoke.

The marble-dark eyes came back down. “Dorian Gray.” The thick lashes fluttered in a butterfly’s movement of curiosity. “Delighted to make your acquaintance, I am sure.” Obviously unable to help himself, he rocked forward on his heels and said, “Are you dressed like this to impress me, or do you go out regularly in such attire?”

"I didn't mean the kind of queen that wears a crown, honey. Though I'm guessing some might." Jules grinned, looking young as he was when he smiled. "I wouldn't mind me a tiara, long as it wasn't too loud. My momma said you never want your accessories overpowering your features," he explained, watching the cigarettes get tucked away with an expression that could only be considered longing. "And they're illegal because all drugs that make folks feel better than something they sell at the pharmacy are illegal."

"Dorian Gray. Like the painting? We read that book in school," Jules said, looking past Dorian's shoulder for the painting, as if it would be sitting right out there for him to go looking at it. He heard the question belatedly, like an echo of itself, and he looked back from over Dorian's shoulder. "No. I always dress like this," he said, looking down at himself. "Sometimes I wear skirts. I'm decent today. You always answer the door in your bathrobe?"

Judging from Dorian’s blank look, he didn’t have any idea what kind of queen doesn’t wear a crown. He was thinking of riddles and bumblebees for no real reason, his eyes opium-glassy and his form ever folding against the side of the doorframe. He seemed amused when Jules mentioned a tiara, envisioning him in paste diamonds at the circus, where he no doubt must live. It made no sense that opium should be illegal. It only soothed. People were made sluggish and slothful, not substances that Dorian imagined would be dangerous. Only the wealthy could truly afford such things, regardless. Surely they could not be a danger to them.

Dorian flinched at the mention of the painting. He might look like marble but he was still a man, and unaccustomed to anyone knowing of it. “Not always. But I have company.” He stepped aside to reveal the doorway and the depths of the library. It took a moment for the eyes to adjust, but there was a rather scrubby looking young man, by appearance a few years before or after Dorian himself. He was wound up in several blankets by the fire and fast asleep--probably naked, judging from the length of leg and arm visible. After the mention of his painting, Dorian’s movement had something of a conjurer’s air to it, a vindictive reveal.

Jules had no idea what Dorian was thinking about only rich folks being able to afford drugs, or he would have cleared that right up. He assumed that confused look on the man's face had to do with tiaras, because men wearing tiaras weren't real common now, and Jules couldn't imagine that they were real common when this man was meant to have been alive. "It's alright. Most folks would think it was weird to see a boy walking down the street with a tiara on his head, but I don't much care for what folks think."

The flinch was unexpected, and Jules' pale, young face became a mask of confusion. He didn't expect Dorian Gray to have a problem with his own painting, for some reason, and he didn't stop to think about the fact that it was all a whole lot more than a book for the man standing there, in the doorway. Jules looked past Dorian at the young man on the bed, and he crinkled his nose, unimpressed with how scrubby the man looked. "Now, I like me some rough men, but you can do better than that, can't you?" he asked Dorian, obviously surprised that someone as pretty looking as the man in the doorway wasn't tumbling with someone just as pretty and fine as himself. If the man sleeping there was supposed to be shocking at all, well, it wasn't, for obvious reasons. And it made Jules feel plenty pretty himself, too, standing there in pink and silk white.

Dorian slid against the frame of the door once more, resettling his weight on the soles of his feet, delicate bones and as transparent as the rest of him. He smiled and hushed Jules’ opinion with his tongue against the back of his teeth, obviously not any more concerned about it than Jules would have been about people and his tiara. “This one comes cheaper and stupider, and is unlikely to boast to his friends, as he has none.” He surveyed Jules once more. “I think you need not take my precautions.” He smiled bitterly through the smoke from the cigarette. “How fortunate for you.”

Jules' expression turned knowing, because he understood a fair bit about hiding things in order to keep safe - he'd just always decided he'd rather take the beatings than go pretending. "It's still safer to hide, honey, even in my time," he said, his entire demeanor softening with the shared challenge of not being what society expected. "I'm just a stubborn cuss. Always have been," he admitted, shrugging willowy shoulders barely covered with a scrap of pink. "Don't mean I ain't gotten the shit beat out of me more times than I can count, and I know plenty boys got worse than that. I can pass, see, when I put on a dress. It's real helpful some days. Or, would be if I was willing to use it to hide behind."

Dorian touched his forehead, rubbing his thumb into his hairline and scattering white ash as he brought his arm again. “I do not understand most of your language,” he admitted. “You speak strangely. But I take your meaning to be that life is not easy for a person of your appearance, and I am not surprised.” There was no cynicism in the comment, as he meant it earnestly enough, not that his expression revealed that particular vulnerability. His throat worked, and he cast his eyes down the hall to either side before speaking again. “You have come to discuss Nathan.”

Jules was all about agreeing with him about looking odd making him stand out in a way that wasn't always good, but the mention of Nathan made him take a step back, until that flowery wallpaper was at his back again. He hadn't known the man in the desert's name, hadn't even thought he'd ever know it until just then. It made him want to turn and run, to get Loren, to do something to end this nonsense once and for all. But he stayed put, and he regarded Dorian with cornflower blue eyes that were as worried as they were bright. "You know, you can get rid of him. Or I can, but you got to help me."

Dorian correctly interpreted the expression on Jules’ face, and he could not become more paler, but something in his dark eyes widened, and the black became a pit, a long fall into nothing. It was a frightening sight, like staring at a corpse. “Ah. You did not know his name.” Dorian’s expression suddenly fell, and the statue’s mask became so mobile, even Pygmalion would have been disturbed. “...Why? You would put him in one of your modern prisons, and then he would slowly drive us both into further madness.”

Jules shook his head. "No. It don't work like that." He took a deep breath, and he started his next sentence three times before he managed to get the words working right. "See, the girl I got in my head, the one that's from a door, like you. She was in the girl the man in the desert- the girl Nathan went and killed. She didn't die. She just popped on into me instead, with all her memories and everything just the same as if she hadn't moved at all," Jules explained, watching that strangely smooth face for some kind of reaction.

The cigarette fell from Dorian’s fingers, now only a stub and barely alive, it bounced on the thin carpet and balanced on the wooden divide where it fizzled gently. The man’s thin lips quivered and his dark eyes slid over Jules’ face, searching. “You were... you were with the girl? She didn’t die?” He could not understand this, not clearly, and he tried to find a way to resolve this. “No,” he said, pushing a shaking hand through his hair and tipping his head up, the long line of his throat exposed. “No, that girl died. I saw her die, she could not have come back from that.”

Jules just waved his hand, wave, wave, so that Dorian would back away from the fucking door if he wanted proof.

Without even thinking, Dorian stepped back away from the frame of his door, not even glancing back at the other occupant at the room.

Jules felt surer about this than he had anything else he'd done so far in this conversation. Violet couldn't get herself killed, so even if Dorian turned and went rabid, she'd be fine. And he'd already showed his hand, and there wasn't a real lot he could do now to make it worse. Dorian knew Jules' name, knew where to go hunting for him, and he knew Jules had memories of the killer in Las Vegas. Might as well seal the deal.

The change from Jules to Violet was immediate, as soon as Jules crossed the door the willowy blond male was replaced with a small, teenage girl in a flowered dress over jeans and fingerless gloves leading up to black-tipped nails. She walked into the room, past Dorian, as if she had every right to wander around the other man's house. When she turned to look at him, she was all wide-eyed smiles. "Wow, so we totally can go into other doors," she said, already wandering away from Dorian in search of his front door and sunlight, which she totally hadn't seen in forever, not without it being from the Murder House's porch.

The sight of the girl threw Dorian into confusion and then panic. He had no concern for his possessions, nor did he imagine this tiny girl would damage him. “No!” There were no windows in this library, nothing to demonstrate that outside London was the gray drizzle it always was, but that was not Dorian’s goal. “No, you must go, right away, right away, he cannot see you are here,” he babbled, nearly tripping over the boy at the fireplace and lunging for her arm to drag her back toward the door.

Violet rolled her eyes, the eternal teenager. "It's totally cool. He can't hurt me like this," she assured Dorian, even as she let him grab her arm. "I'm dead. You knows, like six-feet under? Or immortal, I guess, if I can be here." She looked around then, again, as if she hadn't really believed this could happen. Whoa. She could make good on her threat to Tate now, couldn't she? Leave the house and never come back. Leave him to Hayden and stuff. She did look at Dorian then, as if she was finally seeing him. "Yeah, so you won't die if he does. If you're there, you'll feel it, though," she said, strangely haunted and a little unhinged. "I totally don't recommend it. It kind of sucks."

Dorian was starting to look a little wild. The robe was slipping off one white shoulder, thin as a girl’s, and his grip on her arm was starting to tighten. He pulled at her, his face more terror than anything else. It took over his personality, it made the dark eyes wide and took all hints of lazy wealth out of his movements. “No, you must go, you must go now, he cannot know I am speaking to you, he will come to see you, you must go, you must go.”

Violet let him pull at her. "Fine. Chill. I'll go. Just- You can get rid of him. I know. I was there, you know, in the desert and stuff. He's sick, and Loren will totally take care of him, and then you can end up in someone better. It's not your fault, but you gotta help before he kills that stupid redhead girl. She's a complete loser," she said, pulling away from his arm and glancing around the strange room wistfully before moving toward the door. "You'll help?" she asked hopefully, something dark lurking behind her sad eyes.

The presence of a girl, especially a tiny dark-haired girl, would bring Nathan’s attention in force. All it would take would be a brief glimpse of his interest, a random stirring to see what Dorian was doing, to enforce his desire to go home, and he would take over and there would be no escape, none. The whites were showing around Dorian’s eyes, and he would not, could not reply. “You must go,” was all he could say, a skeleton’s gaunt cheeks and his mouth pressed together. Ignoring the sleepy rise of the boy at the fire, Dorian shoved Violet unceremoniously out the door. He did not wait for Jules to reappear, he simply slammed the door shut so hard that it rattled on its hinges.