"She's lovely. Beautiful, intelligent, very warm in ways I like, too." She's a good friend, or as good of one as Toby will let her be. It's hard to feel comfortable enough to allow himself that much, but they get along well enough and he has no reason to outright despise or loathe her.
But how nice or kind or generally caring she is... doesn't matter to his feelings of hurt or ever-present anxiety. Toby sighs again and shakes his head, not looking at Dorian as he gets to answering those last few questions.
"Nothing happened. She's not done something to me that's upset me." She simply exists here, in a space he thought was going to be all his for however long they've got. He can share, but he wanted the option to say 'no' when his gut wrenched at the thought of welcoming a possibly permanent addition into their lives. There was no other choice when the truth of Sin came out, and now the vampire's stuck. He can't lose Dorian, and so he makes do. Just as he always does, especially with this man.
It's so tiring. God, he feels incredibly exhausted all of a sudden, and there's no amount of sleep, caffeine, or other drugs to help. He runs a hand through his hair and rubs at the back of his neck a few times, his mind already running through a list of what alcohol they have on hand and where it is in the house.
"It's fine," he finally says, as much for himself as for his soulmate. "Nothing a few," dozen, "drinks and some time won't smooth over."
It's easy enough to recognize all of this as evasive maneuvering, and something that's normally simpler to just let go. But today, for many reasons (but principally that the vampire's about to both go hurt himself and effectively end whatever possibility there might have been for their day together) Dorian's unwilling to give in.
"If all of that's true, then why are you preparing to leave to go drink yourself into a stupor?"
Goddammit, he's supposed to be able to walk away from this. Toby presses a finger into his temple to work out the tension already building there.
"Because I bloody can." He turns to glare at Dorian, snapping at the man as he continues. "What does it matter to you, anyway? I finally do this at the wrong moment for you so you notice enough to care? I cut off your supply, and you get upset because no one else is around to give you a hit?"
What is he doing? This is useless. Toby throw a hand up and turns away again. "It doesn't matter. She's fine. She's not hurt me or done anything untoward. Get off it already and take care of yourself today." It's all the action the man's getting unless Sin comes home early.
"I was looking forward to spending time with you," Dorian throws right back, feathers ruffling at the accusation that all he's looking for is sex. "You're about to dash anything we could have today by going back to your room and incapacitating yourself."
A few breaths, but he's not done yet.
"And don't tell me that it has nothing to do with her. You took one look at her dress and practically started running from the room." Dorian throws a gesture at the garment currently sitting outside the door. "Even if she hasn't done something, she is something, and you're refusing to say anything about it for-- god knows why, by this point!"
He's so close to being able to walk away from this. Mere inches from telling Dorian to fuck off and leave him alone. But something about this having thrown at him like he's the problem makes the vampire snap.
"She's your bloody girlfriend!" he snaps, turning back around so he can properly shout at the other man. "And I"m your goddamn soulmate, yet somehow it's escaped you for... what, over a year now? That something's not quite right here? I'd ask how you've missed it for all these months, but you don't bloody care enough to look past your own nose to fucking look for trouble." He groans and wrings his hands as he raises them to his shoulders dramatically. "God, the one time there's trouble about and you won't put your nose in it, and it's when I'm a part of it."
That might be unfair of him to say, but it certainly doesn't feel like it right now. He's been on edge since the first time he met Sin, and after the dust settled on their first major conversation as a group, Dorian stopped noticing or caring. Toby scoffs as he thinks about it and then throws his hands down in a dismissive manner as the looks at the other man.
"All you care about is that you've got what you want. My feelings matter when they cramp yours or affect you directly. If we'd had sex despite my frustration, you wouldn't have given a flying fuck after the fact if I was upset." He rolls his eyes hard. "You can't claim otherwise - it's happened more than once this month, and you didn't have a single goddamn clue."
There's a lot to say here, especially in the way of how this is the first time that they've so much as had an argument over Amartolosa. If her presence really bothers Toby so much, why hasn't the vampire said anything until now?
But the thought, true in some senses, is a cheap excuse. He knows that the only times Toby ever so much as brings up his feelings is when pushed to, or when he's reached a breaking point. It's part of what's made this work out for as long as it has-- that Toby will put up with it all without asserting himself. It's made things easy, and made it so difficult decisions or sacrifices didn't need to be made.
And he still doesn't want to make any of those sacrifices.
"I was trying to make it work for everyone," Dorian explains slowly, drawing in a breath to steady himself. "Because I didn't --I don't-- want to let either of you go."
Toby huffs an angry laugh. "So that's it, is it? Things got comfortable, and no one said anything, so you stopped caring about anything I got upset or anxious about before I met her? That I was being asked to accept someone, a fallen angel with unknown power and abilities, into our home and our relationship without any chance of knowing her."
He couldn't say 'no' back then. He's not even sure he can say it now. But now Dorian's going to suffer through this conversation the same way he is.
"She's your girlfriend, Dorian, and I accepted that. I accepted a long time ago that we'd have other people in our lives, other people we loved to varying degrees. But I didn't know her, and she's an immortal, one older than the both of us. She could be with us for the rest of our lives, if you love her that much."
He sighs and slumps against the door frame, shaking his head. "You're not making anything work, Dorian - I am. When you told me you wanted her still, that you didn't want to give her up, I made sacrifices for our relationship. I gave up sleeping in our bedroom to make peace. I made space in our home for her to be comfortable. I gave up my only chance of being your--" He cuts himself off and sighs again. No. He'll only break his own heart by bringing up his last chance at being in any kind of romance by being Dorian's soulmate and only love.
"You've done nothing but care about yourself and your own needs in all of this. You're complacent and cowardly. You saw things were good enough for you and stopped looking at anyone's feelings but your own."
"I didn't say you had to feel anything towards her. All I was hoping was that-- I don't know. That everyone would be able to live together peaceably enough." And to a large extent, they've done that. From what he's seen, there's even seemed to have been enough daily proof that everyone is friends, at the very least. Toby's even said that he liked Sin well enough not long ago. But somehow it feels like all of that doesn't matter now, based on the way the conversation is going.
"So what am I supposed to do now?" he presses, a clenching discomfort beginning in the pit of his stomach. "Part of this is may be the way you've put it, but the rest..." He knows saying this is going to cause pain, but it's also the truth. "Like you've said, she's an immortal. Longer-lived than us by billions of years. She's not some summer fancy I picked up while touring China. When I met her I was ... drowning." He knows he doesn't have to explain that any further. Toby knows exactly what it means, and how it felt. "She doesn't know the same things about me that you do, and we've gone through much more together." He can't and doesn't want to deny that. "What we have doesn't compare to what you and I have."
But what if it could?
"I've never faced something like this before." He isn't even sure he truly loved anyone before Toby, and now there's this. "I'm sure you just want her to leave, but I don't know what to do."
He narrows his eyes at the other man. "Don't put words in my mouth or assume anything about what I want. You don't get that in this situation."
Sending Sin away wouldn't solve the problems they have that have been hiding beneath the surface of their relationship since they found each other again. It would make it easier to deal with them, but nothing is fixed by causing a scene or scandal. Toby wishes she had never existed in his world, but that's impossible. Now he's just dealing with the fallout of being stuck in yet another shitty, impossible situation where he has to fight the multiverse itself for the slightest bit of happiness or contentment.
Sin going would make things so much easier for him, but when the fuck has the multiverse cared about him or what he wants?
"I don't want to lose you, now or ever." That much is easy to admit. Toby takes a deep breath to calm himself and rubs at the corner of his eyes with the back of his hand. "I understand what she means to you and what she did for you. I'm grateful she was there when you needed someone." And so angry that he wasn't there, that he didn't know he could be there. He knows that sorrow and despair, and he's glad his soulmate had an anchor where he didn't.
"You need to figure out what you want, Dorian. I can't decide that for you." Can't make the man decide if he's willing to fight for Sin to keep himself open to whatever it is she brings to him. The vampire rubs his eyes again before dropping his gaze to the floor and stuffing his hands in his pockets to search for something he can smoke or fidget with before he starts pacing.
"I cannot lose you," he murmurs after a slightly too long silence. "Not again. I just--" A beat as he chokes on a breath. "I just don't know how to share you with someone who means as much to you as me."
"I don't know either. It's not-- it isn't like I planned for this to happen. Which you know, of course. But that still doesn't change the reality that I did... I do have feelings for her. I don't want her to be hurt, the same way I don't want to hurt you with whatever choice ends up being made."
It's a strange thought to occur in a moment like this, but this is why he doesn't like marriage. If eternal partners and soulmates really did exist, it wouldn't have been possible for him to have feelings for anyone but Toby, in the past or the present. Except in their case reality did what reality does, and while he was sure Toby was lost forever, body corrupted and soul burned upon Lucifer's altar, he met someone else.
Some of the people he met and fell for in Toby's previous absence were lessons, rather than partners. If only that had been the case this time.
If only the solution they'd tried to live with for months had worked out.
"There's more to it than just this, too. I'm not... I don't mean to bring this out as a means of guilting you, but I've been told by two of Amartolosa's relatives to expect revenge if I hurt her." A beat. "They can't kill me forever, obviously, but they wouldn't have to. They could go after you, or find ways to do some lasting harm that's nothing to do with physical pain." Dorian sighs, and crosses his arms over his chest as he looks out the drawing room window. The way he sees it, there's simply no way anyone is getting through this unscathed. "If I did end my relationship with her, I'd have to do it carefully."
He scoffs as he pulls a box of cigarettes from his pocket and lights one. Of course Dorian would get threatened and choose to stay with someone anyway. That's just his fucking luck. Thanks, multiverse, you've done it again with shitting on him while he's already down! Toby shakes his head and stuffs the pack back in his pocket as he starts to pace the length of the bedroom.
"Someone's getting hurt no matter what any of us do, Dorian." That feels important to say, as the man seems to believe there's a way for them all to just go about all this as if no one had ever felt put upon or hurt by another. As if it isn't already obvious that he's hurting because of Dorian's actions as part of all this. The vampire sighs, exhaling a cloud of smoke as he stops just outside the other man's field of view.
"You want this to be easy, and that isn't possible. You asked for this complicated situation, because you didn't want to choose when I came back." He understands why that happened, and he agreed to the arrangement, but he never said he liked it. "Now things are escalating, and you can't ignore that anymore."
Feelings are always complicated. Attachments to others are fraught with difficulties and challenges. Toby avoided them for decades for this very reason. Funny how the multiverse decided to give him a fucking soulmate to challenge that.
The vampire takes another long drag from his cigarette before he continues. "I'm not saying you should do something immediately or without a plan, but you've got to take ownership of your part in all this. I'm upset," more than, but that's beside the point, "about not getting a real choice in this, but you've consistently assumed things were fine to avoid this very conversation. That won't work anymore, and you need to decide what you really want. Whether that's making whatever this... thing is that includes Amartolosa work or something else entirely, you have to choose."
He can't make that choice for his soulmate. God, he wishes he could to make this easier for the both of them, but no ultimatum is - or ever would - make that work. He loves Dorian more than he could possibly explain, even to his own detriment at times, and that means he has to let the man decide what makes sense for him.
Having all of this dumped on him is deeply uncomfortable, psychologically thorny in the worst kind of way, and usually the last kind of relationship problem he ever goes out of his way to deal with. It's always been much easier to walk away and fly to Tangier and wait for all of his problems to go up in flames or simply (literally) die in his wake. But the consequences this time are too dire, and ones he actually cares about, for a change. Refusing to get his hands dirty could, if everyone is pushed too far, mean losing everything. (God, what he wouldn't give for things to have just worked out the way they were going.)
There are many things about his relationship with Toby that haven't been ideal lately-- that haven't been ideal for some time now. But beneath all of the trauma, the melancholy, the anxiety, and the problems, this is still the man who, years ago, showed him that there was more to life than what he'd known of it back when he was living on an autopilot of sex, drugs, and casual relationships. If there's any chance at all of getting part of what they were back, he can't let the man go.
It hurts already, knowing that this is possibly going to mean throwing aside the person who kept him from self-destructing completely, when all he'd done at the time was make terrible choice after terrible choice. There will be so much to navigate afterwards, depending on how the difficult conversations to follow and ensuing months go. How close any of them are allowed to remain, through what their own feelings (or each other) will allow.
"Then I'm going to choose you." And with those words, he can already feel the start of how difficult ripping this fucking band-aid off is going to be. How even that won't be the end of the problems to come. "If I can only be with one of you, that's how I want it." Dorian runs a hand through his hair in a self-soothing motion, and deflates back into the headboard behind him, his gaze tracking over to the nearest window.
"Unless you can see a way to feeling as though you've made a choice you can live with." Or let him live with on his own.
The declaration doesn't feel... real, nor does the followup feel fair. Dorian making a choice in the heat of the moment isn't exactly what Toby was pushing for, but having that tiny push back to keep dealing with his pain and anxiety about welcoming another person into their home and relationship overshadows the relief it could have brought. Maybe that's not what the younger immortal intended with his words, but that's how it feels to the vampire. It's ugly and an attempt to shirk what has to remain with him as far as decisions. Toby sighs heavily and rubs the back of his neck with his free hand, shaking his head the whole while.
This could have been such a romantic and meaningful moment, but of course it couldn't be. If Dorian can shove consequences or blame onto someone else, he will always choose to do so.
"If you're choosing one of us, and you want it to be me, then choose me. Don't... settle or try to coerce me into letting you have whatever you want while I'm forced to make do." He shakes his head again as he ashes his cigarette. "I want you, but you better fucking want me too, otherwise we'll end up right back here again in a few months' time."
Why did Dorian have to say it like that? Of the thousands of ways he could have said it - and still rightfully struggled and been upset - he had to fucking say it that way? Why? What good does it do to push on him more while they're already arguing over this?
Slumping down against the end of the bed, Toby sinks to the floor and stares out the open window. "All I've ever wanted is to be with you," he mutters, the tears in his eyes obvious in his voice. For better or worse, for all the struggles and pain its brought, he's never not wanted their relationship since he admitted his feelings to himself. "But I can't take being the last to be considered anymore. I can't ignore how much this has hurt me any longer, no matter how hard I try to drown my feelings."
He's not even sure how to start in this moment. It's immediately obvious that he could have taken a more time to consider his words before letting them come out wrapped with emotion and distress over coming loss, but in this moment he simply can't care.
He's tired of fighting, and nothing being fine even when there isn't fighting.
"Be honest with yourself. What is there to choose between us, lately? What do we actually have, in a year and a half after we found each other again?" Breathing out in a rough sigh, Dorian finds his feet and reaches for the nearest form of coverage available. He couldn't say why right now, but the other man's emotions aren't reaching him where in the previous months, they would have. "Are either of us satisfied with how things are? You aren't, obviously, but--" Another breath, as he finds the garment in his hands is one of Toby's flannel shirts. Exhaling, this time in frustration, he lets the garment fall to the floor before turning to the other man.
"None of this feels the way it used to between us, and I know part of that's unavoidable. Both of us were taken apart by Lucifer." Dorian shakes his head. "But maybe things are the way they are between us now because there's nothing left to put back together."
It stings. All of that stings in a way that makes Toby sick with the need for drink to dull his pain. And it--
It highlights one of the many problems they're having.
"I'm trying, Dorian." His voice shakes with the effort of getting his words out. "I have been putting myself back together while dealing with-- with all your shit at the same time. Dealing with someone else living in what should feel like my home that I don't know and whose presence threatens everything we built before the Brigadoon."
He still wants this. He still wants them and everything they have. It's messy and painful, sure, but it's the best thing he's ever had. He's never felt so complete or at ease (in a strange, often nonsensical way) as he has with Dorian.
Shifting to his feet, Toby snuffs his cigarette in the nearest ashtray and moves to stand in front of the other man. "You're impulsive. You're selfish and a goddamn coward when it comes to telling me things straight. You don't care when I worry about your safety and dismiss half my concerns about... everything! For no reason other than your own egotistical need to be right all the time." He takes a breath to steady himself, ignoring the tears running down his face.
"But goddammit, I love you, Dorian Gray. You see things in a way I never could, see... me in ways that shouldn't be possible. You strive for beauty and richness in life, and you put that passion into the things you love most. You're stubborn and cynical, but you still give a damn. I know that, or you wouldn't be fighting with me now, about all this." Another breath as he finally wipes his face with the back of his hand. "I know things aren't good right now, and I still want this anyway. I still want to make this work."
But...
"I need you to understand that I see how you look at her. I know you may not see where this could go, but I do." He sighs and drops his voice to a murmur. "Someday, you may love her more than me. Not in the same way, but still more. I don't want to take that love from you, but I don't want to give up on you either, because if I don't fight now, I'll never have the chance when you decide she's worth more to you, and you abandon me down the road."
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mayfairmonster) wrote2021-01-20 02:31 pm
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But how nice or kind or generally caring she is... doesn't matter to his feelings of hurt or ever-present anxiety. Toby sighs again and shakes his head, not looking at Dorian as he gets to answering those last few questions.
"Nothing happened. She's not done something to me that's upset me." She simply exists here, in a space he thought was going to be all his for however long they've got. He can share, but he wanted the option to say 'no' when his gut wrenched at the thought of welcoming a possibly permanent addition into their lives. There was no other choice when the truth of Sin came out, and now the vampire's stuck. He can't lose Dorian, and so he makes do. Just as he always does, especially with this man.
It's so tiring. God, he feels incredibly exhausted all of a sudden, and there's no amount of sleep, caffeine, or other drugs to help. He runs a hand through his hair and rubs at the back of his neck a few times, his mind already running through a list of what alcohol they have on hand and where it is in the house.
"It's fine," he finally says, as much for himself as for his soulmate. "Nothing a few," dozen, "drinks and some time won't smooth over."
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"If all of that's true, then why are you preparing to leave to go drink yourself into a stupor?"
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"Because I bloody can." He turns to glare at Dorian, snapping at the man as he continues. "What does it matter to you, anyway? I finally do this at the wrong moment for you so you notice enough to care? I cut off your supply, and you get upset because no one else is around to give you a hit?"
What is he doing? This is useless. Toby throw a hand up and turns away again. "It doesn't matter. She's fine. She's not hurt me or done anything untoward. Get off it already and take care of yourself today." It's all the action the man's getting unless Sin comes home early.
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A few breaths, but he's not done yet.
"And don't tell me that it has nothing to do with her. You took one look at her dress and practically started running from the room." Dorian throws a gesture at the garment currently sitting outside the door. "Even if she hasn't done something, she is something, and you're refusing to say anything about it for-- god knows why, by this point!"
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"She's your bloody girlfriend!" he snaps, turning back around so he can properly shout at the other man. "And I"m your goddamn soulmate, yet somehow it's escaped you for... what, over a year now? That something's not quite right here? I'd ask how you've missed it for all these months, but you don't bloody care enough to look past your own nose to fucking look for trouble." He groans and wrings his hands as he raises them to his shoulders dramatically. "God, the one time there's trouble about and you won't put your nose in it, and it's when I'm a part of it."
That might be unfair of him to say, but it certainly doesn't feel like it right now. He's been on edge since the first time he met Sin, and after the dust settled on their first major conversation as a group, Dorian stopped noticing or caring. Toby scoffs as he thinks about it and then throws his hands down in a dismissive manner as the looks at the other man.
"All you care about is that you've got what you want. My feelings matter when they cramp yours or affect you directly. If we'd had sex despite my frustration, you wouldn't have given a flying fuck after the fact if I was upset." He rolls his eyes hard. "You can't claim otherwise - it's happened more than once this month, and you didn't have a single goddamn clue."
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But the thought, true in some senses, is a cheap excuse. He knows that the only times Toby ever so much as brings up his feelings is when pushed to, or when he's reached a breaking point. It's part of what's made this work out for as long as it has-- that Toby will put up with it all without asserting himself. It's made things easy, and made it so difficult decisions or sacrifices didn't need to be made.
And he still doesn't want to make any of those sacrifices.
"I was trying to make it work for everyone," Dorian explains slowly, drawing in a breath to steady himself. "Because I didn't --I don't-- want to let either of you go."
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He couldn't say 'no' back then. He's not even sure he can say it now. But now Dorian's going to suffer through this conversation the same way he is.
"She's your girlfriend, Dorian, and I accepted that. I accepted a long time ago that we'd have other people in our lives, other people we loved to varying degrees. But I didn't know her, and she's an immortal, one older than the both of us. She could be with us for the rest of our lives, if you love her that much."
He sighs and slumps against the door frame, shaking his head. "You're not making anything work, Dorian - I am. When you told me you wanted her still, that you didn't want to give her up, I made sacrifices for our relationship. I gave up sleeping in our bedroom to make peace. I made space in our home for her to be comfortable. I gave up my only chance of being your--" He cuts himself off and sighs again. No. He'll only break his own heart by bringing up his last chance at being in any kind of romance by being Dorian's soulmate and only love.
"You've done nothing but care about yourself and your own needs in all of this. You're complacent and cowardly. You saw things were good enough for you and stopped looking at anyone's feelings but your own."
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"So what am I supposed to do now?" he presses, a clenching discomfort beginning in the pit of his stomach. "Part of this is may be the way you've put it, but the rest..." He knows saying this is going to cause pain, but it's also the truth. "Like you've said, she's an immortal. Longer-lived than us by billions of years. She's not some summer fancy I picked up while touring China. When I met her I was ... drowning." He knows he doesn't have to explain that any further. Toby knows exactly what it means, and how it felt. "She doesn't know the same things about me that you do, and we've gone through much more together." He can't and doesn't want to deny that. "What we have doesn't compare to what you and I have."
But what if it could?
"I've never faced something like this before." He isn't even sure he truly loved anyone before Toby, and now there's this. "I'm sure you just want her to leave, but I don't know what to do."
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Sending Sin away wouldn't solve the problems they have that have been hiding beneath the surface of their relationship since they found each other again. It would make it easier to deal with them, but nothing is fixed by causing a scene or scandal. Toby wishes she had never existed in his world, but that's impossible. Now he's just dealing with the fallout of being stuck in yet another shitty, impossible situation where he has to fight the multiverse itself for the slightest bit of happiness or contentment.
Sin going would make things so much easier for him, but when the fuck has the multiverse cared about him or what he wants?
"I don't want to lose you, now or ever." That much is easy to admit. Toby takes a deep breath to calm himself and rubs at the corner of his eyes with the back of his hand. "I understand what she means to you and what she did for you. I'm grateful she was there when you needed someone." And so angry that he wasn't there, that he didn't know he could be there. He knows that sorrow and despair, and he's glad his soulmate had an anchor where he didn't.
"You need to figure out what you want, Dorian. I can't decide that for you." Can't make the man decide if he's willing to fight for Sin to keep himself open to whatever it is she brings to him. The vampire rubs his eyes again before dropping his gaze to the floor and stuffing his hands in his pockets to search for something he can smoke or fidget with before he starts pacing.
"I cannot lose you," he murmurs after a slightly too long silence. "Not again. I just--" A beat as he chokes on a breath. "I just don't know how to share you with someone who means as much to you as me."
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It's a strange thought to occur in a moment like this, but this is why he doesn't like marriage. If eternal partners and soulmates really did exist, it wouldn't have been possible for him to have feelings for anyone but Toby, in the past or the present. Except in their case reality did what reality does, and while he was sure Toby was lost forever, body corrupted and soul burned upon Lucifer's altar, he met someone else.
Some of the people he met and fell for in Toby's previous absence were lessons, rather than partners. If only that had been the case this time.
If only the solution they'd tried to live with for months had worked out.
"There's more to it than just this, too. I'm not... I don't mean to bring this out as a means of guilting you, but I've been told by two of Amartolosa's relatives to expect revenge if I hurt her." A beat. "They can't kill me forever, obviously, but they wouldn't have to. They could go after you, or find ways to do some lasting harm that's nothing to do with physical pain." Dorian sighs, and crosses his arms over his chest as he looks out the drawing room window. The way he sees it, there's simply no way anyone is getting through this unscathed. "If I did end my relationship with her, I'd have to do it carefully."
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"Someone's getting hurt no matter what any of us do, Dorian." That feels important to say, as the man seems to believe there's a way for them all to just go about all this as if no one had ever felt put upon or hurt by another. As if it isn't already obvious that he's hurting because of Dorian's actions as part of all this. The vampire sighs, exhaling a cloud of smoke as he stops just outside the other man's field of view.
"You want this to be easy, and that isn't possible. You asked for this complicated situation, because you didn't want to choose when I came back." He understands why that happened, and he agreed to the arrangement, but he never said he liked it. "Now things are escalating, and you can't ignore that anymore."
Feelings are always complicated. Attachments to others are fraught with difficulties and challenges. Toby avoided them for decades for this very reason. Funny how the multiverse decided to give him a fucking soulmate to challenge that.
The vampire takes another long drag from his cigarette before he continues. "I'm not saying you should do something immediately or without a plan, but you've got to take ownership of your part in all this. I'm upset," more than, but that's beside the point, "about not getting a real choice in this, but you've consistently assumed things were fine to avoid this very conversation. That won't work anymore, and you need to decide what you really want. Whether that's making whatever this... thing is that includes Amartolosa work or something else entirely, you have to choose."
He can't make that choice for his soulmate. God, he wishes he could to make this easier for the both of them, but no ultimatum is - or ever would - make that work. He loves Dorian more than he could possibly explain, even to his own detriment at times, and that means he has to let the man decide what makes sense for him.
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There are many things about his relationship with Toby that haven't been ideal lately-- that haven't been ideal for some time now. But beneath all of the trauma, the melancholy, the anxiety, and the problems, this is still the man who, years ago, showed him that there was more to life than what he'd known of it back when he was living on an autopilot of sex, drugs, and casual relationships. If there's any chance at all of getting part of what they were back, he can't let the man go.
It hurts already, knowing that this is possibly going to mean throwing aside the person who kept him from self-destructing completely, when all he'd done at the time was make terrible choice after terrible choice. There will be so much to navigate afterwards, depending on how the difficult conversations to follow and ensuing months go. How close any of them are allowed to remain, through what their own feelings (or each other) will allow.
"Then I'm going to choose you." And with those words, he can already feel the start of how difficult ripping this fucking band-aid off is going to be. How even that won't be the end of the problems to come. "If I can only be with one of you, that's how I want it." Dorian runs a hand through his hair in a self-soothing motion, and deflates back into the headboard behind him, his gaze tracking over to the nearest window.
"Unless you can see a way to feeling as though you've made a choice you can live with." Or let him live with on his own.
Christ, this sucks.
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This could have been such a romantic and meaningful moment, but of course it couldn't be. If Dorian can shove consequences or blame onto someone else, he will always choose to do so.
"If you're choosing one of us, and you want it to be me, then choose me. Don't... settle or try to coerce me into letting you have whatever you want while I'm forced to make do." He shakes his head again as he ashes his cigarette. "I want you, but you better fucking want me too, otherwise we'll end up right back here again in a few months' time."
Why did Dorian have to say it like that? Of the thousands of ways he could have said it - and still rightfully struggled and been upset - he had to fucking say it that way? Why? What good does it do to push on him more while they're already arguing over this?
Slumping down against the end of the bed, Toby sinks to the floor and stares out the open window. "All I've ever wanted is to be with you," he mutters, the tears in his eyes obvious in his voice. For better or worse, for all the struggles and pain its brought, he's never not wanted their relationship since he admitted his feelings to himself. "But I can't take being the last to be considered anymore. I can't ignore how much this has hurt me any longer, no matter how hard I try to drown my feelings."
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He's tired of fighting, and nothing being fine even when there isn't fighting.
"Be honest with yourself. What is there to choose between us, lately? What do we actually have, in a year and a half after we found each other again?" Breathing out in a rough sigh, Dorian finds his feet and reaches for the nearest form of coverage available. He couldn't say why right now, but the other man's emotions aren't reaching him where in the previous months, they would have. "Are either of us satisfied with how things are? You aren't, obviously, but--" Another breath, as he finds the garment in his hands is one of Toby's flannel shirts. Exhaling, this time in frustration, he lets the garment fall to the floor before turning to the other man.
"None of this feels the way it used to between us, and I know part of that's unavoidable. Both of us were taken apart by Lucifer." Dorian shakes his head. "But maybe things are the way they are between us now because there's nothing left to put back together."
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It highlights one of the many problems they're having.
"I'm trying, Dorian." His voice shakes with the effort of getting his words out. "I have been putting myself back together while dealing with-- with all your shit at the same time. Dealing with someone else living in what should feel like my home that I don't know and whose presence threatens everything we built before the Brigadoon."
He still wants this. He still wants them and everything they have. It's messy and painful, sure, but it's the best thing he's ever had. He's never felt so complete or at ease (in a strange, often nonsensical way) as he has with Dorian.
Shifting to his feet, Toby snuffs his cigarette in the nearest ashtray and moves to stand in front of the other man. "You're impulsive. You're selfish and a goddamn coward when it comes to telling me things straight. You don't care when I worry about your safety and dismiss half my concerns about... everything! For no reason other than your own egotistical need to be right all the time." He takes a breath to steady himself, ignoring the tears running down his face.
"But goddammit, I love you, Dorian Gray. You see things in a way I never could, see... me in ways that shouldn't be possible. You strive for beauty and richness in life, and you put that passion into the things you love most. You're stubborn and cynical, but you still give a damn. I know that, or you wouldn't be fighting with me now, about all this." Another breath as he finally wipes his face with the back of his hand. "I know things aren't good right now, and I still want this anyway. I still want to make this work."
But...
"I need you to understand that I see how you look at her. I know you may not see where this could go, but I do." He sighs and drops his voice to a murmur. "Someday, you may love her more than me. Not in the same way, but still more. I don't want to take that love from you, but I don't want to give up on you either, because if I don't fight now, I'll never have the chance when you decide she's worth more to you, and you abandon me down the road."