[If it were anyone else, and he hadn't been the one to message him. Ugh. There was a reason he didn't say, "Come over." Still, he sends the homunculus over to answer the door. The little gargoyle stares up at Dorian blankly then takes off in an ungainly flight to return to the bookshelf.
Grayson is on the sofa in dress slacks, dark socks, and a white dress shirt, no tie. His shoes are beside the door. He leans forward to set his phone on the coffee table.]
[Dorian's eyes follow the homunculus as it opens the door for him, startled. He noticed it the last time he was here (it was the only thing in the room to notice) but there was no indication then that it was alive.]
Does the city know you've a third resident living in your suite? [Not a genuine concern. More amused. Dorian closes the door behind him and toes his shoes off at the door.
He moves further into the suite, and settles himself next to Grayson with a catlike grace and a cat's comfort with placing itself wherever suits, regardless of whether it's about to get fur on a prized piece of furniture. When he turns to the vampire, his gaze is fixed on Grayson's face with a particular focus.]
To answer your question about why I believe you, it's threefold. I feel that numbness, I am exceptionally less idiotic, but I've also known you for long enough to remember what it was like to be around you sometimes.
What happened? [If he had to guess from context clues, it's that someone's been hurt. It's happened between them before, but he'll ask rather than start with blunt assumptions.]
It's just a servitor. I grew it from a severed thumb.
[He waves his hand idly. The homunculus is a useful thing. That's all.]
What it's like to be around me.
[The sound he makes is ambiguous, somewhere between a snort and a grunt.]
I don't think I'm suited to 'connecting' to humans. Not the usual lot.
[Those quotations are audible in the way he says it.]
They expect things even when told not to. They dislike things they specifically ask for. And somehow it's my responsibility. I refuse. I refuse to let anyone lay anything like that at my feet when I've been clear and open from the start.
[He turns his attention on him abruptly.]
If I almost bit your hand off, would you expect me to cuddle? I'm not speaking metaphorically.
[This is ending up more relatable than Dorian was expecting without any context offered beforehand or now. The difference is that, for whatever reason he has, Grayson seems more than simply annoyed by the inconvenience of other people's emotional inconsistencies and ill-fitting expectations.]
No, [he chuckles, startled and amused by the abrasive absurdity of the hand comment] but I'm not a cuddler. For some people, intimate pain in the right context is halfway to romance.
[As Grayson talks about responsibility, Dorian nods.]
Then don't. As you've said, it's not your responsibility-- it's their own mistaken assumptions and buyer's remorse when they're getting exactly what they paid for and were warned about.
You sound like you've made some kind of decision already [he notes] so what's the part of this that's actually bothering you?
That sex is the currency of this city and that there is no avoiding the situation even when one would wish to. They change us or drug us enough to ensure that.
[Never mind that at least one of the instances he's discussing right now involved him voluntarily ingesting something.]
And that I'm apparently so far removed from emotion that the bulk of it is nonsensical to me. This whole...exploration we've set ourselves to. All it's going to result in is me alienating almost everyone I come in contact with and being annoyed enough to want to eat them.
With that person-- or people. [He frowns.] You know, this is hard when you're keeping all of the details to yourself.
[As usual. But Grayson's penchant for complete secrecy, even about details that he doesn't think would be revealing, is inconvenient. And annoying.]
Are you being discerning in the people you choose? [Does he know how to recognize someone that's a bad fit, emotionally? It feels like a valid question.] This isn't something that was going to be easy or clean, the least of all for you.
[Not an insult, just a fact. He's never experienced being numb to the point of losing understanding of certain emotions, but it's easy to imagine a hard right turn being a difficult mountain to climb after that.]
The details are absurd, and of course I'm being discerning, when I have the choice.
[He frowns, brows pinching closer.]
One of them...the worst one I met in the park during all that sticker business. Things went fine then, but I also didn't let on what I was, and that was before I had reason to rethink things.
We were thrown together at one of those parties in Insincerity. We talked. He had an impressive intellect. We shared enough interests I thought it could be workable. I didn't say I was a vampire then, but I did say I don't habitually have sexual desire and that I don't like being touched. He was understanding.
[He runs an idle thumb across the other, brow pinching tighter.]
Then I ran into him at the Scratch. People are ridiculous about fucking. They just are. No matter how reasonable they seem before it happens.
Most people are. [He doesn't know how much awareness of his once-human perspective Grayson still has on this subject, so he settles into the idea of offering his own, for both himself and the people he's left in his wake, if desired.]
Do you want a more recently human perspective on why? Or is that something you recognize, or is worth discounting because you're disinterested in sex?
And all of those things you mentioned have nothing to do with someone's character or emotionality. [Dorian waves it all off with a hand.
He wasn't there, so he can't tell if Grayson stumbled into something that was obviously going to end badly after sex, but given his own experiences with putting much less emotional weight into sex with many people than they did with him, it's something he can easily imagine happening.]
That is why I contacted you. If I simply wanted to complain, I'd buy a diary.
[The hardest part to him is how people can seem reasonable all the way up until the moment they aren't and that no matter how well he reads them for manipulation, when it comes to far more straightforward things, it's not at all the same.]
I'm also disinterested in racking up citations, so I had best figure out a way, hadn't I? This was much easier when I was just erasing memories.
[So he truly doesn't understand. No wonder he's managed to find himself running into problems with humans and sex.]
When it's with someone you have any sort of real feeling for, it's intimate. It's being vulnerable with someone else, especially if you're being penetrated. It's built up as the highest romantic act there is, for anyone who believes in that. It doesn't matter if it involves pain, pleasure, or both. It's closeness and trust. A step towards something more.
And if you want the scientific spin on things, in a human brain it releases chemicals that produce feelings of bonding and affection.
[He gestures.]
As I mentioned, that's most people. Some people have personalities, maladaptive traits, or enough experience in a way that allows them hold onto more distance.
But almost always, every part of it is messy and irrational.
How can anyone have real feelings for me within one or two times of meeting me? You've met me. I'm not an easy person, especially when I'm not trying to be.
[He makes a thoughtful noise.]
So I can just alter their brain chemistry without wiping the memories. Yes, I can do that easily. No fuss, no muss, no stupidity afterward. Of all of the things I've studied about anatomy, I never had much reason to delve into this side of it. That's helpful. Thank you.
You're clinging to one part of what I said, and also clearly don't have much concept of how you affect others. [He has firsthand experience with that a few times over now.]
Go ahead. [Dorian exhales, because. Who is he? Mother Theresa? He's interested in their pact and in learning, not in changing anyone who doesn't, in his opinion, even need changing to begin with. If Grayson's going to miss the point, then perhaps that's just how things are.]
The chemical's called oxy... something. You'll have to look it up.
I don't know. All I could tell you is how it feels, and that's going to be specific to me, and different with everyone you know. [He's willing to try, but it's complicated.
Dorian tilts his head.]
You've lived my life more than five times over. Was all of that time really spent-- I don't know, studying and surviving? Only spending time around humanity in shallow or predatory ways?
Even specific to you is more than I have to go on at the moment. Fighting wars, studying, manipulating behind the scenes, embroiled with members of my own clan, or handling the Ventrue, or any number of things that took tremendous time, attention, and focus and didn't involve fucking the kine or figuring out how they felt about me.
[He doesn't get why this is so hard to understand, either. It hits close to the same questions others have asked him.]
I have one servitor who has been with me around 250 years. He was barely human when I found him, and he hasn't gotten any more in all that time. So no. If I had the experience, I wouldn't be having these issues. I wouldn't be wasting your time or mine asking advice.
So you're out of your Machiavellian and warlike element in more ways than one. Point taken. [He huffs an amused sound.] This must be Hell for you as much as it might be freedom.
[He's only met so many other immortals, and most of them were beings like him-- independent and hedonistic creatures, drifting through life at their own speed, and chasing their own interests and purposes, whatever those happened to be at the time. The idea of one with such singular focuses for so many centuries of existence had been unfathomable in anything but a god.
Dorian settles back into the couch, touching one of his dark curls beside an ear thoughtfully.]
It's the intensity of your focus and lack of judgment. Do you remember what I said about making someone feel like they're the only person in the room? [He taps Grayson's knee with his fingertips.] It's that. You listen. However you intend it, whatever reason's behind it, it comes off as personal investment.
[For all that this is a break, it's one he hardly needed. His focus and stamina for his projects was endless. Nothing here has come close to filling that void, to engaging him as fully. Not having any true mortal enemies, not having his usual backstabbing coterie of sharks.
He's listening now, and his expression is as close to a cat with its ears sideways as human physiognomy can get. He'd said if he knew what it was he'd stop it. He can't exactly stop that. It isn't a switch to be toggled on or off. He lifts a hand to drag it down his mouth.]
I could throw out several cutting remarks.
[It's bone dry. He shakes his head abruptly.]
I thought that if I could...physically feel, experience it through their eyes and give them pleasure, it might spark something in me. It didn't. I suppose I don't have the oxy...tocin.
[Yes, he does know that word. He must have studied it as one of several hormones produced by the brain. It was never relevant to his particular research, so he shunted it aside.]
But when it didn't, they grew angry or disturbed, and that... Why would you be angry when someone tells you in advance they're not like that? That they'll never be like that?
This isn't an edge. It's a precipice. If all I'm capable of feeling for most is irritation, then I hardly see the point. I could do that without being open. I did. Constantly.
Looking for self-discovery in other people is always a mistake, if you ask me. It's something that starts and ends within. People are the levers for it sometimes, but not the end point.
[Especially for anyone immortal, who will lose most people in the blink of an eye.]
No. It's a setback, and a normal experience when you're trying something you have no experience in. Perhaps you really can't do this, [he could believe it, from what he's heard tonight] but if you stop at bumps in the road, you'll never know.
[Dorian waves a hand.]
However, there's obviously nothing binding either of this to us besides wanting. If you don't want for whatever reason, like you said, there's no point in staying on the train past your stop.
[He's going to persist, on his own if need be. He has his reason and wants it. To keep a hold on himself.]
[He falls quiet for far longer after he finishes, mulling everything he has said. Eventually, what he thinks and wants coalesces from it.]
I believe I've used an ability to connect to others as a metric of sorts, because I know I care about my research, for example. My agendas. I'm quite attached to my habits and proclivities, all of which point to some emotion.
My attachments to vampires have been less emotional, barring my lover and my sire, to a lesser extent my childe in the beginning, and more transactional, as they almost always are among my kind.
[He taps his own knee with an index finger.]
I believe you hit upon the true rub of it in saying I'm trying something in which I have no experience. I can't think of the last time I've done that. I stick to areas in which I have mastery, not out of fear of failing, but from efficiency. It works. I've needed nothing else to satisfy me or perform my duties and expectations.
And in my world, failure is more weighty than hurt feelings or a partially severed hand. My perfectionism is in my way.
[He shakes his head.]
I'm not quitting. If I hurt people in being myself, I hurt them. It's not out of dishonesty at this point. If I meet someone who can handle it or doesn't see it as a flaw, then that's a step forward.
Maybe that works. Depends on the person, I suppose.
[For someone like him, the drive to know is stronger than any investment in the productive aspects of research, interests and hobbies.]
That's what I meant by 'discerning'. [Dorian folds his hands in his lap, brushing the thumb of one hand thoughtfully over the back of the other.] You've undoubtedly experienced it in different ways, but I think age is the greatest barrier for the young. [As in almost everyone.] There are emotional truths that people who won't ever live them can't and won't understand, regardless of how they're explained or even if they're shown proof of them. Even between us, there are things I can imagine about your life, but I only have the experience of 160 years to draw on to do it.
[He doesn't doubt there are things about being 870 that even he can't fathom now.]
For me, most people are a waste of time in that regard. Perhaps you'll feel differently. [He's not trying to be discouraging, and Grayson's already said that he feels similarly, but setting expectations feels useful.]
I've often had the sensation of trying to explain biochemistry to insects since coming here.
[It comes out dry. Yes, age gaps have proven stubbornly frustrating in this. There's no jumping that particular hurdle. It's immutable and insurmountable. He'll have to navigate around it.]
It may prove a waste of time in the end with most of them. Any good scientist draws from a wide sample pool.
Or perhaps it's a bit like prospecting. I'm sure there's some witty metaphor I could dredge if I could bring myself to care enough to recall the process.
At any rate, your perspective was useful. I have a better idea of what not to do next time. It's a start.
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
no subject
[If it were anyone else, and he hadn't been the one to message him. Ugh. There was a reason he didn't say, "Come over." Still, he sends the homunculus over to answer the door. The little gargoyle stares up at Dorian blankly then takes off in an ungainly flight to return to the bookshelf.
Grayson is on the sofa in dress slacks, dark socks, and a white dress shirt, no tie. His shoes are beside the door. He leans forward to set his phone on the coffee table.]
Leave your shoes at the door.
no subject
Does the city know you've a third resident living in your suite? [Not a genuine concern. More amused. Dorian closes the door behind him and toes his shoes off at the door.
He moves further into the suite, and settles himself next to Grayson with a catlike grace and a cat's comfort with placing itself wherever suits, regardless of whether it's about to get fur on a prized piece of furniture. When he turns to the vampire, his gaze is fixed on Grayson's face with a particular focus.]
To answer your question about why I believe you, it's threefold. I feel that numbness, I am exceptionally less idiotic, but I've also known you for long enough to remember what it was like to be around you sometimes.
What happened? [If he had to guess from context clues, it's that someone's been hurt. It's happened between them before, but he'll ask rather than start with blunt assumptions.]
no subject
[He waves his hand idly. The homunculus is a useful thing. That's all.]
What it's like to be around me.
[The sound he makes is ambiguous, somewhere between a snort and a grunt.]
I don't think I'm suited to 'connecting' to humans. Not the usual lot.
[Those quotations are audible in the way he says it.]
They expect things even when told not to. They dislike things they specifically ask for. And somehow it's my responsibility. I refuse. I refuse to let anyone lay anything like that at my feet when I've been clear and open from the start.
[He turns his attention on him abruptly.]
If I almost bit your hand off, would you expect me to cuddle? I'm not speaking metaphorically.
no subject
No, [he chuckles, startled and amused by the abrasive absurdity of the hand comment] but I'm not a cuddler. For some people, intimate pain in the right context is halfway to romance.
[As Grayson talks about responsibility, Dorian nods.]
Then don't. As you've said, it's not your responsibility-- it's their own mistaken assumptions and buyer's remorse when they're getting exactly what they paid for and were warned about.
You sound like you've made some kind of decision already [he notes] so what's the part of this that's actually bothering you?
no subject
[Never mind that at least one of the instances he's discussing right now involved him voluntarily ingesting something.]
And that I'm apparently so far removed from emotion that the bulk of it is nonsensical to me. This whole...exploration we've set ourselves to. All it's going to result in is me alienating almost everyone I come in contact with and being annoyed enough to want to eat them.
no subject
[As usual. But Grayson's penchant for complete secrecy, even about details that he doesn't think would be revealing, is inconvenient. And annoying.]
Are you being discerning in the people you choose? [Does he know how to recognize someone that's a bad fit, emotionally? It feels like a valid question.] This isn't something that was going to be easy or clean, the least of all for you.
[Not an insult, just a fact. He's never experienced being numb to the point of losing understanding of certain emotions, but it's easy to imagine a hard right turn being a difficult mountain to climb after that.]
no subject
[He frowns, brows pinching closer.]
One of them...the worst one I met in the park during all that sticker business. Things went fine then, but I also didn't let on what I was, and that was before I had reason to rethink things.
We were thrown together at one of those parties in Insincerity. We talked. He had an impressive intellect. We shared enough interests I thought it could be workable. I didn't say I was a vampire then, but I did say I don't habitually have sexual desire and that I don't like being touched. He was understanding.
[He runs an idle thumb across the other, brow pinching tighter.]
Then I ran into him at the Scratch. People are ridiculous about fucking. They just are. No matter how reasonable they seem before it happens.
no subject
Do you want a more recently human perspective on why? Or is that something you recognize, or is worth discounting because you're disinterested in sex?
And all of those things you mentioned have nothing to do with someone's character or emotionality. [Dorian waves it all off with a hand.
He wasn't there, so he can't tell if Grayson stumbled into something that was obviously going to end badly after sex, but given his own experiences with putting much less emotional weight into sex with many people than they did with him, it's something he can easily imagine happening.]
no subject
[The hardest part to him is how people can seem reasonable all the way up until the moment they aren't and that no matter how well he reads them for manipulation, when it comes to far more straightforward things, it's not at all the same.]
I'm also disinterested in racking up citations, so I had best figure out a way, hadn't I? This was much easier when I was just erasing memories.
no subject
When it's with someone you have any sort of real feeling for, it's intimate. It's being vulnerable with someone else, especially if you're being penetrated. It's built up as the highest romantic act there is, for anyone who believes in that. It doesn't matter if it involves pain, pleasure, or both. It's closeness and trust. A step towards something more.
And if you want the scientific spin on things, in a human brain it releases chemicals that produce feelings of bonding and affection.
[He gestures.]
As I mentioned, that's most people. Some people have personalities, maladaptive traits, or enough experience in a way that allows them hold onto more distance.
But almost always, every part of it is messy and irrational.
no subject
[He makes a thoughtful noise.]
So I can just alter their brain chemistry without wiping the memories. Yes, I can do that easily. No fuss, no muss, no stupidity afterward. Of all of the things I've studied about anatomy, I never had much reason to delve into this side of it. That's helpful. Thank you.
no subject
Go ahead. [Dorian exhales, because. Who is he? Mother Theresa? He's interested in their pact and in learning, not in changing anyone who doesn't, in his opinion, even need changing to begin with. If Grayson's going to miss the point, then perhaps that's just how things are.]
The chemical's called oxy... something. You'll have to look it up.
no subject
[He's clearly growing frustrated.]
If I knew what it was I was doing, I'd stop it, obviously.
no subject
Dorian tilts his head.]
You've lived my life more than five times over. Was all of that time really spent-- I don't know, studying and surviving? Only spending time around humanity in shallow or predatory ways?
no subject
[He doesn't get why this is so hard to understand, either. It hits close to the same questions others have asked him.]
I have one servitor who has been with me around 250 years. He was barely human when I found him, and he hasn't gotten any more in all that time. So no. If I had the experience, I wouldn't be having these issues. I wouldn't be wasting your time or mine asking advice.
no subject
[He's only met so many other immortals, and most of them were beings like him-- independent and hedonistic creatures, drifting through life at their own speed, and chasing their own interests and purposes, whatever those happened to be at the time. The idea of one with such singular focuses for so many centuries of existence had been unfathomable in anything but a god.
Dorian settles back into the couch, touching one of his dark curls beside an ear thoughtfully.]
It's the intensity of your focus and lack of judgment. Do you remember what I said about making someone feel like they're the only person in the room? [He taps Grayson's knee with his fingertips.] It's that. You listen. However you intend it, whatever reason's behind it, it comes off as personal investment.
no subject
[For all that this is a break, it's one he hardly needed. His focus and stamina for his projects was endless. Nothing here has come close to filling that void, to engaging him as fully. Not having any true mortal enemies, not having his usual backstabbing coterie of sharks.
He's listening now, and his expression is as close to a cat with its ears sideways as human physiognomy can get. He'd said if he knew what it was he'd stop it. He can't exactly stop that. It isn't a switch to be toggled on or off. He lifts a hand to drag it down his mouth.]
I could throw out several cutting remarks.
[It's bone dry. He shakes his head abruptly.]
I thought that if I could...physically feel, experience it through their eyes and give them pleasure, it might spark something in me. It didn't. I suppose I don't have the oxy...tocin.
[Yes, he does know that word. He must have studied it as one of several hormones produced by the brain. It was never relevant to his particular research, so he shunted it aside.]
But when it didn't, they grew angry or disturbed, and that... Why would you be angry when someone tells you in advance they're not like that? That they'll never be like that?
This isn't an edge. It's a precipice. If all I'm capable of feeling for most is irritation, then I hardly see the point. I could do that without being open. I did. Constantly.
no subject
[Especially for anyone immortal, who will lose most people in the blink of an eye.]
No. It's a setback, and a normal experience when you're trying something you have no experience in. Perhaps you really can't do this, [he could believe it, from what he's heard tonight] but if you stop at bumps in the road, you'll never know.
[Dorian waves a hand.]
However, there's obviously nothing binding either of this to us besides wanting. If you don't want for whatever reason, like you said, there's no point in staying on the train past your stop.
[He's going to persist, on his own if need be. He has his reason and wants it. To keep a hold on himself.]
no subject
I believe I've used an ability to connect to others as a metric of sorts, because I know I care about my research, for example. My agendas. I'm quite attached to my habits and proclivities, all of which point to some emotion.
My attachments to vampires have been less emotional, barring my lover and my sire, to a lesser extent my childe in the beginning, and more transactional, as they almost always are among my kind.
[He taps his own knee with an index finger.]
I believe you hit upon the true rub of it in saying I'm trying something in which I have no experience. I can't think of the last time I've done that. I stick to areas in which I have mastery, not out of fear of failing, but from efficiency. It works. I've needed nothing else to satisfy me or perform my duties and expectations.
And in my world, failure is more weighty than hurt feelings or a partially severed hand. My perfectionism is in my way.
[He shakes his head.]
I'm not quitting. If I hurt people in being myself, I hurt them. It's not out of dishonesty at this point. If I meet someone who can handle it or doesn't see it as a flaw, then that's a step forward.
no subject
Maybe that works. Depends on the person, I suppose.
[For someone like him, the drive to know is stronger than any investment in the productive aspects of research, interests and hobbies.]
That's what I meant by 'discerning'. [Dorian folds his hands in his lap, brushing the thumb of one hand thoughtfully over the back of the other.] You've undoubtedly experienced it in different ways, but I think age is the greatest barrier for the young. [As in almost everyone.] There are emotional truths that people who won't ever live them can't and won't understand, regardless of how they're explained or even if they're shown proof of them. Even between us, there are things I can imagine about your life, but I only have the experience of 160 years to draw on to do it.
[He doesn't doubt there are things about being 870 that even he can't fathom now.]
For me, most people are a waste of time in that regard. Perhaps you'll feel differently. [He's not trying to be discouraging, and Grayson's already said that he feels similarly, but setting expectations feels useful.]
no subject
[It comes out dry. Yes, age gaps have proven stubbornly frustrating in this. There's no jumping that particular hurdle. It's immutable and insurmountable. He'll have to navigate around it.]
It may prove a waste of time in the end with most of them. Any good scientist draws from a wide sample pool.
Or perhaps it's a bit like prospecting. I'm sure there's some witty metaphor I could dredge if I could bring myself to care enough to recall the process.
At any rate, your perspective was useful. I have a better idea of what not to do next time. It's a start.
no subject
Dorian pats Grayson's knee again, pleased.]
Glad to be of service. Just do me a favor and don't let on, [he jokes.] A man has a reputation to uphold.
And I'll give you one thing in all of this: you don't do anything by half measures.
no subject
[His brief chuckle is a bit less rusty than it has been in the past. It has been getting more use these nights.]
Nothing worth doing is worth doing with faint effort. If it isn't all the way, it would be a waste of everyone's time, especially my own.
no subject
What do you want now? Time to mull everything over? [Does he want to be alone, essentially.]
no subject
[He will get better with handling this in time, he's sure, especially with a fresh perspective.]
(no subject)