deathoftheauthor | the city

The club, tonight at eight o'clock. I thank you for this.

[At the appointed time, Dorian is seated at one of the tables at the club, leafing through a book. When the door opens, he glances up, then sits back in his seat and gestures for Louis to sit down.]

Thank you for coming, Monsieur.

( Things Dorian doesn't know: 8 PM is still early for Louis, even in the long dark of wintertime. Ordinarily, with no particular urgency toward rousing himself, he might still be lazing around in the clothes he'd worn to bed last night. He isn't, as they say, a morning person. But this is important.

He's dressed warmly against the damp chill that seems to hang in the air this month: a black wool coat over a thick green sweater, soft leather gloves and a matching newsboy cap. The hat he removes when he enters, but the gloves stay on.

Louis shakes his head slightly side to side, politely dismissing Dorian's thanks as he takes the seat across from him. The truth is that he feels he owes it to him in some inexplicable way, in spite of any misgivings he might have about the man. But admitting to that sense of debt is more than Louis wants to give him. )

I only ask that you temper your expectations. I lack true talent when it comes to reading minds. There are those rare vampires among us who can reach out and pluck a thought from your head just as easily as you might flip to a passage in a book.

( A small shrug. )

I myself am the opposite.

[Dorian gives a slightly bewildered smile at Louis presenting this as a bad thing.]

That's reassuring, actually. I prefer to keep my thoughts in my own head.

[He glances away, eyes straying briefly to the half-finished wallpaper before looking back.]

I think I have not been kind to you. And inadvertently, you have suffered from my choices.

What?

( Whatever Louis had expected Dorian to say, it wasn't that. He blinks, his focus sharpening as his confusion deepens. )

What makes you say that?

Lestat said he told you what happened that night in November. When Ethan got loose.

[When I set Ethan loose.]

He did, yes.

( A brief, uncomfortable hesitation. )

My injuries healed quickly. It's Ethan's guilt that troubles me. However... I know that none of it was done out of malice.

( Which doesn't mean that Louis has forgiven it, exactly, but then it isn't really his to forgive. He understands. And he's done worse. )

[The line of Dorian's shoulders eases when Louis states his major concern about the entire affair--it's the same concern as his own.]

I did not like that he took the blame for it, but he did it while I was away. He asked me to make no confessions, but given as you already know, I wanted to apologize. It was...misguided. I thought because his first full moon here resulted in no encounters, the same would happen this time.

Well. You know what they used to pave the road to Hell. I've done many things that I regret — some misguided, some merely uncaring... some cruel. Immortality only gives us more opportunities to err. What can we do but try to learn from our mistakes?

( He spreads his hands slightly in a small shrug. )

What made you want to help him?

( It's a strange question, perhaps, but Louis asks it without any judgment or reproach. )

[It is a surprising question, since Dorian didn't really think about it that much. He knows why Ethan needed help, but not why he should be the one to do it. He probably shouldn't have been. He's never been a helping people kind of person before, so he's pretty terrible at it.]

He is afraid of the wolf. Of what he is. [Dorian isn't totally without empathy, he's just better at denial. He hesitates before he says the next thing.] And he helps me.

[It's gotten to feeling pretty uneven.]

( Louis wonders what Dorian means when he says Ethan helps him, but he decides not to ask. Some things aren't meant for him to know. Instead, he nods, his gaze dropping to his hands as he folds them upon the tabletop, and he's quiet for a long moment before he speaks again. )

I don't know if it's something you can understand if you aren't burdened with it. To be compelled to kill... to know that what you do is evil, and to do it again and again, because the only way to end the killing is with your own death...

I understand why you would want to help him. If he is anything like myself, I don't know that anything can.

[Gently:] No. It is something I can neither understand nor imagine.

[Not the way Louis and Ethan feel it, anyway. Dorian has seen a lot of violence, men who would be executed if they refused to fight a rich man's war, but it was never a sort of possession like this.]

You do make me think of him, sometimes. More...cerebral, I suppose. He is far more cultured than he is willing to let on, but his preference is still that which he can do and experience for himself.

[A trait Dorian shares, which might explain why he was less tolerant of Louis.]

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