WHO Orym and Dorian Storm WHERE Their bedroom in the Bells Hells Spooky House WHEN Morning of November 25 WHAT Orym is back to himself and confused when he wakes up in one of the guest bedrooms. Luckily Dorian is there to check his identity and fill him in. STATUS Complete ART CREDITHere WARNINGS Typical themes of loss regarding Orym's husband, but mostly just some relieved boyfriends.
It had been a long while since Orym had woken up in a bed by himself. It was all he'd known for six years, then one night on the road to Zephrah with Dorian and Fearne, they had gotten the last room at an inn and, without much thought, all three of them had passed out in the lone bed and the rest had become history. He had gotten used to sleeping between Dorian and Fearne, then—depending on if it was Vallo or Exandria—just one of them. That had evolved into something different with Dorian, of course, but at the end of the day, Orym just wasn't used to waking in a bed with no one at his side.
That was exactly the case this morning, though. To make matters even more confusing, Orym realized as he slowly blinked awake, was that he wasn't in his bed at all. He wasn't even in his bedroom, instead finding himself in one of the spare rooms in their house.
As Orym started to brush off the tendrils of sleep that had hooked into him, he tried to puzzle together just what was going on. He remembered going to bed in his rightful place, curled up on his side of the bed after tugging on Dorian's arm to wrap around him and keep cradled to his chest. There had been nothing all too abnormal. They hadn't had some fight that would drive them away; Orym wasn't one who liked going to bed angry and would rather talk it out than put literal walls between them. He wasn't a sleepwalker, but perhaps he had woken to get a glass of water and, in his grogginess, had slipped into the wrong bed.
That seemed like the most logical answer, but even that didn't sit well in Orym's mind. As he moved to get out of the bed, he noticed that the room seemed more lived in than it ought to have been. It was a spare room, waiting for visitors or more of their friends at home to inhabit it. It shouldn't have a pile of clothes—his clothes, he realized—folded on the dresser or his sword and shield leaning against a wall.
Giving up on trying to figure this one out on his own, Orym grabbed his sword and shield with one arm and his clothes with the other, then left the room behind and padded barefoot down to the one that he normally woke in that he shared with Dorian. It was still early enough that he stepped lightly, not wanting to wake any of the other residents of the house. Once inside their room, he carefully replaced his weaponry to its rightful place alongside Dorian's lute and scimitar, then dropped his clothes into the hamper. They were simple actions, but they made Orym feel as though he was settling things a little closer to right after the odd wake-up.
Dorian had not been sleeping. Not really. He laid in bed, sure. He tossed and turned and pretended to be asleep, sure. Maybe once he closed his eyes during this week that Orym was not really Orym and possibly got a few hours in. That seemed logical and possible in his mind. People could not exist solely without sleeping, even elves needed to trance for a little while. But without Orym in bed with him, and the stress and worry about slipping up about Will—though he was certain Orym and his inherent cleverness had already figured it out—Dorian found sleep a bottom-level priority.
That was why this morning he wasn't in the room. He had gone downstairs early, earlier than usual because laying in the big empty bed was finally ripping at the last shreds of resolve he had. He thought about doing some meditation, walking through the steps of the Zeph'aeratam outside in the crisp air (although maybe sleep-deprived, Dorian shouldn't wield sharp objects), or slamming back chords on his lute. But it all felt impossible this morning, and so Dorian figured he should try to close his eyes before the rest of the day truly caught up with him.
He was opening the door to their room, which had become his room this past week, and saw Orym there, putting his sword and shield back next to his lute and scimitar. Busying himself around the room like it was his. Orym didn't seem curious or awkward in the space, not like the previous days, and so Dorian, in all his exhausted, unintelligible hope, blurted out the first thing he could think of to prove Orym's realness:
"Do you like pie?"
Dorian had known things were wrong when he had offered some to the other Orym, hoping that the crossover between the two versions wasn't too different, when he had politely declined saying he didn't care for it.
Orym turned where he stood at the question, one eyebrow raised. His curious look almost immediately fell, though, as concern burned through his chest as he took in Dorian's appearance. Part of him had already been surprised that he'd been up and about so early, but then Orym recognized that clear exhaustion on Dorian's face and in the way he held himself. Had he not been sleeping? Is that why Orym had woken up in that other room? There was also an undercurrent of hope behind Dorian's tired eyes, which made Orym apprehensive. He had missed something, that much was all too clear, and he had no idea what it could have been.
First things first, though: there was a reason that Dorian was asking that question and Orym wasn't about to dismiss it.
"For breakfast? Definitely," Orym replied, attempting to sound lighter than he felt as he continued to assess Dorian with a perceptive eye. He took a step forward, his head cocked to the side just enough to put his curiosity on display. "Any other time of the day too, though."
Orym didn't wait or pause long at all before adding, "Are you okay, sweetheart?"
Oh, Dorian did not hide his relief at the answer. He had barely been able to stand still as Orym said yes to pie, and then asked him if he was okay. Dorian was now. Maybe not seconds ago, but he didn't need to make that distinction quite yet. He was crossing the room with an alarming speed and throwing his arms around Orym's shoulders, as he dropped to his knees so they could be at the same height. Dorian was finally holding the person he had wanted to nothing more than kiss all week.
It had been a tumultuous and tenuous thing that Dorian felt like he had been failing for days. He knew the other Orym could see the longing in his face no matter how much he had tried to hide it.
Orym wasn't looking at him like a stranger now though, he called him sweetheart, he liked his favorite foods. And if something was slightly different, if there was another change to this universe where he didn't know anyone else—and Dorian hoped that was not the case—they would figure it out. He just needed Orym. Was that needy? Too codependent? Unhealthy? Probably, but most relationships didn't have one day of knowing one another and the next treating one like a stranger.
"It's been such a weird week," Dorian said, burning his face into Orym's neck. Safety and protection surrounded him in this position, and he didn't want to let go. "You don't remember it, do you?"
Though Dorian's actions did nothing to quell the concern brewing in Orym, that didn't stop him from immediately circling his arms around the larger man and pulling him in as close as he seemed to need. Something had happened and it clearly had something to do with Orym and it even more clearly had knocked Dorian off center. Orym couldn't like that and whatever reassurance and care he could give, he would gladly offer with one arm circling around him and the other's fingers carding into Dorian's hair.
Orym was quiet for a moment, still needing to take in the implications of it's been such a weird week, before confirming, "No, I don't remember anything off." That didn't mean nothing hadn't happened, though, and he recognized that. For Dorian to be acting this way, something really had to be wrong.
Staying right where he was, Orym tried his best to be a soothing presence. "I just remember going to bed with you, then I woke up in the other room. I thought maybe I'd sleep walked or...I don't know." He turned his head, pressing his lips to the side of Dorian's. "I'm here, though. I don't know what happened, but I'm here, Dor."
Dorian laughed. It was comical that while he had spent the week trying to navigate this alternate universe where he didn't exist to Orym (or at all, that was still up for debate), Orym didn't have a clue any of it had happened. This was their life now, this push and pull of what ifs and possibilities where somehow they managed to return to this: each other. Even if the path to get there was complicated and confusing when Vallo was involved. Dorian held on tighter and still continued laughing, because gods it felt good to and he couldn't seem to find the somber words to explain what had happened.
"You didn't sleep walk," Dorian finally managed to say. "I wish you had, that would be easier to explain, than what it all actually was." Dorian pulled away, but his hands never left Orym, resting on his shoulders as smoothed a comforting line from his bicep and back. It comforted Dorian as well. He opened his mouth once, twice, three times and failed, before, "You didn't know me."
He exhaled. "You didn't know me but you knew everyone else. Well, everyone else here. And, and I don't fault you for it. I need you to know that. I kept saying that to you too, you were, this version of you was very apologetic. But it was like another version of you. What would have happened if—" Dorian struggled here, looking at Orym then away, "If Will hadn't died. We never met. You eventually went to Jrusar with him, and you met the rest of the Bells Hells, but me and Fearne?"
Dorian simply shook his head as if to say, not us, no way, never.
As Dorian explained, Orym's brow seemed to only furrow deeper and deeper, until he felt that little stab in his chest at Will's name. He started to get a better picture of what he missed; he had never left, but he wasn't himself and instead some version from another timeline. There was a version of himself, he was realizing, that never lost Will.
That realization made a whole series of complicated microexpressions twitch across his face. Orym missed Will every day, but he had come to appreciate the life he lived now. A part of him would always love his husband, but with years of reflection and healing, he had been able to open his heart to another, the handsome genasi before him. He had gone on adventures, met new people, found purpose and goals for himself, all of which hinged on him becoming someone new off the back of such a great loss.
And yet, there was someone who didn't have that loss, but still seemed to somehow have gone on some of those adventures. But to do so without Fearne and Dorian, two of the most important people in his life?
And then for Dorian to have to witness that, too? Orym's heart was aching for more reasons than one.
Orym stepped in toward Dorian, pressing a gentle kiss to his cheek before he embraced Dorian once more. Had they been reversed, had Dorian suddenly been someone who never left the Silken Squall and didn't know him, Orym would have craved connection and comfort. He didn't know if it was the same for Dorian, but he could try. He finally spoke into Dorian's hair after a moment, his voice quiet, "That must have been really hard for you."
"It was—something. It was definitely something," Dorian agreed. Of course, watching another version of Orym where they weren't together was hard. But it wasn't only that. He didn't want Orym to get the wrong impression that Dorian struggled with competing in real time with someone who was alive, and just not here. Mostly, Dorian had been confused—how to feel, how to act, how to make everything okay for however long this took to go away. And it had taken far too long in his mind.
"But I had Chetney, and FCG, and Ashton. They were all really supportive when they could. We didn't—I didn't want to make you feel bad for feeling the way you did. You were happily married still, and I was just a blue guy in your bed. If anything it was awkward, really really awkward." Dorian was blushing, remembering the first morning when modesty was something he suddenly worried about in front of Orym. He had hated that they were strangers, that everything Dorian thought he knew had shifted ever so slightly, to make the steps he took off. It was like sitting down in a chair and missing the seat, falling to the floor. Over and over again.
He smiled warmly at the kiss though, and turned his face so that he could kiss Orym again, finally, after a week of not. Out of respect, of course. But the thoughts that had inappropriately run through his mind thinking about Orym this week were definitely not respectful. That had made him blush again. "Other than the look on your face that first morning, I knew everything was just bad when you didn't like pie. It felt important to ask you that first. That was why, with the question—" Dorian gestured toward the door, indicating seconds ago.
"A version of me that doesn't like pie. I can hardly believe it." It was a joke, or at least an attempt at one, to disguise some of the inner turmoil that Orym was attempting to hide that he was still grappling with. His loved ones had always been first priority, though Dorian—and their other friends—had been good at teaching and reinforcing in Orym that he was important, too. In this moment, though, giving comfort to Dorian felt like a balm to Orym, too.
Orym had a lot of questions, but he didn't even know where to start with them. He had imagined a life with Will in it countless times, but those were always dreams, thoughts born of lonely nights in tavern rooms or camping alone on the road before he met Dorian and the others in Emon. It was hard to wrap his head around some timeline that looked so utterly different, even if Vallo had primed him for the possibility of such things existing in the first place. But the thought once again lodged roughly in his heart when he considered waking up and finding this man that he loved, but only knowing him as, like Dorian had said, a blue guy in his bed.
Pulling away, Orym paused to look at Dorian's face just a moment, taking his expression and just Dorian-ness in before he took one of his hands in his. "Come on," he said, stealing one more soft kiss before stepping back to tug Dorian toward their bed. "Let's spare your knees. Lay down with me and we'll talk, okay?"
"You should not have to worry about sparing my knees. I'll kneel all day for you if I have to," Dorian said. In the immediacy of the moment, it sounded romantic. And then given a second after, he realized how inappropriate it could actually be.. He was not going for innuendo, but Dorian had said the words so boldly, without another thought that taking them back now seemed wrong. He'd be lying if he said he didn't mean it that way too. But that didn't stop him from blushing furiously, as Orym directed him onto the bed.
He easily crawled in, still not taking his eyes off Orym as he did. Dorian wasn't sure if looking away would reset the whole timeline again and this Orym would believe—well, he didn't know what sort of direction his life would have taken. Orym had already traveled the most extreme scenario this week, with Dorian petering behind him. That made Dorian unable to wait, and pulled Orym in beside him on the bed before he was fully on himself.
And, like always, Dorian was curling around him instantly. This had been a week of missing him when he was right there within reach. That might have been worse than Orym actually being gone. He was quiet for so long, that Dorian was certain he was falling asleep. He could have fallen asleep. Was it too early to take a nap?
"All right," Dorian said, nudging at Orym's temple with his nose. "We can talk now. I haven't gotten to do this in awhile. I had to get it in first."
Orym was so very close to making a comment about kneeling all day, up until he saw that blush on Dorian's face and realized he'd already leaped there on his own. Instead, he just grinned a bit ruefully and allowed Dorian to pull him in with a sound of surprise that was somewhere between a yelp and a laugh. As concerned as he was at this news that he had been gone for days with a different version of himself walking around Vallo in his stead, Dorian always had a way about himself that made Orym feel light.
Though, in Orym's mind, it had only been a night since he had last felt Dorian curl around him in a proper cuddle in their bed, he was happy to indulge in the moment. Still, once he was given permission, he was ready with the questions. "All right," he started. Orym turned a bit, pressing his face into the juncture between Dorian's neck and shoulder as he ran his fingers across Dorian's chest in a slow, soothing motion. "Tell me about him. Was he nice to you? Did he do anything I should apologize for?"
He doubted that he'd be anything, but Orym didn't know. And if he kept his tone light, he thought, and erred on the side of levity, maybe that would make talking about this easier—not just for Dorian, but for Orym himself.
That was the problem, wasn't it? The Orym that had been with them for a week wasn't so wholly different that Dorian and the rest of the Bells Hells had to plan to take him out. He had heard of others dealing with terrible versions of their friends, families, and loved ones. But this Orym had just been Orym. Lighter, perhaps, in that the weight of deaths were not pushing down on him from his past. Just the fresher ones, because Will was alive and beside him through all the hardships.
"He was nice to me," Dorian said, running his hand down Orym's back in an idle gesture while he thought back to the days with this other Orym. "He was polite, we grabbed dinner together, and he listened to me play music. It was all very normal and you. I don't know how to explain it." He sighed heavily. The only problem—and was it a problem?—was that Orym didn't know him.
"And he did a lot of apologizing for the situation, so I don't know if I could bear to hear you apologize for him. I told him he didn't have to, and then I said I was sorry for making things strange for him and—" Dorian huffed out another laugh, because he felt lighter than the last week had allowed him to be. "So nothing bad, nothing needing to apologize for. He was respectful, but married, and I didn't intrude on that. You remain a good person in every sort of reality."
And like an afterthought, and because they were laying in their shared bed, Dorian added, "The nights were lonely though."
The Orym that Dorian described sounded familiar, he thought; he sounded like him. It made sense, in a way. If the primary change between their lives had been that Will had never died, then Orym would remain the same in some ways. His polite manners and respectful attitude had been ingrained in him as a child, even if he also spent much of his youth causing pint-sized chaos on the cliffsides of Zephrah alongside Will himself. It wasn't a huge shock to hear that he had been polite and respectful to Dorian, even if he was a stranger.
Which, again, was a thought that made Orym's heart ache. Still, it also made sense in its own way. If he hadn't lost Will, there would have been no reason for Orym to leave Zephrah and journey around on his own. He never would have stumbled into the lives of Dorian, Fearne, and the other Crown Keepers. He found himself mourning those lost friendships (because even if they weren't able to be romantically involved, Orym treasured his friendship with Dorian, too), even as he found himself glad that there might be some version of himself out there that would get to grow old with Will. That feeling of gratitude didn't negate his feelings about what he had in the here and now, though.
Orym shifted, pressing his lips to Dorian's jaw. "I'll just be extra clingy to make up for it," he murmured there, a joke that wasn't too far off from the truth. He continued, just as quiet, "I don't know what I would have done if we were swapped and you hadn't known me. Thank you for being so good to me, every version of me."
"You don't have to be extra clingy," Dorian said, his eyes closing softly at Orym's kiss. "This is enough. Just the normal amount will make up for it." And it would. All the unsettled feelings Dorian had had during the week, when he couldn't rely on leaning on Orym, were slowly melting away. All it had required was Orym knowing him, loving him, not being a stranger in a familiar place. A small ask, really.
"And no thanking me either, I wouldn't be rude to you. Even if the other version of you was rude first." And even that was more difficult to comprehend. Orym mean, Orym not himself, Orym with a chip on his shoulder and ready to fight the world. At least the world who had been so often cruel to him had made him persevere, and be the Orym he was now. The one Dorian loved with his whole heart. It could have been worse. This week could have been a nightmare.
He was thankful for that instead, that he had only been mildly sad and feeling guilty for it. "And if things were different, if I didn't know you, I would probably be—" Again he laughed, the ridiculous of it and the honesty of the situation coming at him. "I would probably be miserable. A sad bard playing only sad songs with his sad life. You would have felt terrible. I wouldn't wish that on myself, let alone you."
Dorian pressed a kiss to Orym's forehead, a reminder of the first one he had ever given to Orym when he knew he liked him more than a friend. He had regretted it had to be as a goodbye, then. " Are you hungry? Is it too early to have pie for breakfast?"
Orym's eyes closed as Dorian kissed his forehead, getting the same reminder of that kiss before they had said goodbye in Exandria. He was so grateful that their goodbye felt short-lived to him, only by the grace of having been brought to Vallo when they'd been separated for only a short while. With the memories he'd been granted, he now knew exactly how lucky he was; Vallo might have been a pain in the ass, this past week a prime example, but he had Dorian, he had their other friends, and for that, Orym would be grateful.
Part of him wanted to argue that Dorian would have found some other happiness without Orym around, but he knew that this wasn't the time. He didn't want to muse about that sort of potential anyway. Not when it seemed that they were being reunited, in a way. For now, he wanted to focus on what they had—and just how very good it was.
"Hm." The hum was followed up with another shift from Orym, then one more stolen kiss. "It's never too early for pie, Dor." He pulled back, grabbing for Dorian's arm once again to pull him along, a soft grin on his face as he did. "Let's go find some, yeah?"