Mayfair Manor

[XCandy and LunacyX]

The question was hardly out of Dorian’s mouth before Melody burst out laughing, quickly clamping a hand over her mouth to muffle the sound lest she wake Magdalena. “Is that what she thinks?” she chuckled, rapidly shaking her head. And then, after considering it for a moment, continued, “Who knows, maybe he is, I can’t really tell these things. But I seriously doubt it. My prospects have hardly improved since he turned me down in middle school. Besides, who in their right mind ‘courts’---” She cast him a brief, sarcastic side-eye for the term. “---a woman who’s about to die?” Again shaking her head, she settled back into the couch cushions with an amused little sigh. “Lawrence is lovely, of course, but I haven’t really thought about it since then. You start growing up and all the things that used to be attractive---being serious and responsible and always so collected---they just sort of become boring, you know? Or maybe I’m just a ridiculously carefree person and that’s just me, but either way. That’s strange, though. Maggie has a vivid imagination, I can see where she’d come up with it, but she usually pushes anyone she thinks has an interest at me. I mean that as literally as I can, she’ll just shove men into me at the park. It’s weird that she…” Naturally turning to face Dorian, she suddenly went quiet, her lips pursing before a look of revelation gleamed in her eyes. “Ah.” Bobbing her head slightly as if she’d caught on, her eyes flickered at the ceiling in Magdalena’s direction. “Of course. Now that we’re here, only papa will do. Of course she wouldn’t want Uncle Lawrence getting in the way of her plans. Sly little minx, that one.” Sighing, she set her glass on the coffee table and leaned forward, running an exasperated hand back through her hair.
After a contemplative moment, she turned her gaze back on Dorian, daring to maintain eye contact for the first time since he’d entered the house. “Who says, Dorian?” she asked quietly, calm and plaintive, “What makes you an unsuitable father figure? I don’t know what you’ve done in the last seven years, but…you’ve been good to her since we came here. I mean, my dad never read me bedtime stories. You want to do right by her, right? So what’s less than ideal? Maggie adores her lovely, sophisticated, charming papa. After some of the horror stories I’ve heard about the parents in your family, I’d say you’re golden. Or, hell, look at my parents. When I found out I was pregnant, they were so terrified of me producing a little witch spawn that my father tried to physically drag me to a clinic to get rid of it. When I refused, they threw me out so fast that I had to barricade myself in my room just to throw a bag of clothes together, and I haven’t heard a single word from them since. I tried calling them when I got diagnosed and they just hung up on me. People like that are less than ideal parent figures. Whatever your history is…hell, Magdalena will probably just be impressed. I don’t really think I got around to teaching her shame, it didn’t seem that important. Maggie is my entire world, Dorian, I wouldn’t leave her with you if I didn’t think you’d be a good father. I mean I don’t have a lot of options, but I still think you’ll be a good father. It’s all…blundering and struggling to figure out what you’re supposed to do for a while, but you’ll get the hang of it.” Offering a vague, sympathetic smile, she patted his hand to reassure him. “It’ll be fine. It’s a learn-on-the-job kind of thing, you know?”  

[Okimiyage]

Dorian chuckled softly to himself, and met her gaze only briefly before sweeping his eyes aside. “I must seem utterly transparent to you.”
Who in their right mind courts a dying woman?
But he didn’t know if he believed that. Magdalena might refrain from reading mind out of good manners, but she was an astute child anyways— and children often saw things that adults did not, or would not, allow themselves to. Like the way a man’s glance lingered, or how his words might halt and stumble off of a normally eloquent tongue.
“I…guess that it’s hard to know when you’re ready for something like this. I certainly…” he shook his head. “I’m glad that you have faith in me. But it’s hard to trust myself.”
Dorian had grown up in Osiris, part of a family which afforded him a unique perspective on the crime-riddled city, and afforded unique privileges to its offspring. As Magdalena would grow up. Which meant that the darkest parts of the city would be open to her, as was the right of the Mayfair legacy, and that she would be exposed to some of its ugliest secrets and acts. He twirled the stem of the glass between his fingers. “I always told myself that I’d be ready to settle down and have children when I figured up what the hell I had to teach them, you know? As though somehow, I’d be able to impart the wisdom they needed to avoid all the pitfalls that I stumbled into over the years, to keep them safe. And, stupidly, I assumed it would be a boy whose education I had to worry about.” He passed a hand briefly over his face, and finally tucked it under his chin, cupping the back of his neck as he stared moodily forward. “I don’t want her to grow up like I did, like any of us did, making choices that no child should have to make. Even now you can see the toll that took from people like Nicolae, or Antha. They say that the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree, though, and if that’s true, she’ll be the type to lean into it.” And with the kind of stories about him that floated through Osiris’s rumor mill on a regular basis, she would have plenty to model her adventures after. It was fine for now, when Magdalena was so young, but it was later that he was worried about. When Melody wouldn’t be there. But he didn’t have a choice in that, and neither did she.
“Mel…” he paused. A thought had struck him. He’d never asked before.
“Why did you decide to—well, to keep her? You had to have known that there wasn’t any question about who—that I—“ Melody was afforded the rare privilege of seeing Dorian blush. “I mean, you knew Magdalena was ours, but…you hated me. When your family threw you out, what stopped you from giving in to them? Or even just…giving Magdalena up for adoption?”  

[XCandy and LunacyX]

Melody pursed her lips, cocking her head to the side as she tried to put it into words. “It may be hard to believe, but I never hated you. I can’t say I thought much of you, but I never hated you. But honestly…it didn’t matter who her father was, I barely thought about it at the time. It’s funny, I always kind of thought I would just n** the problem in the bud if I got into that kind of situation. But as soon as I found out about her…it’s primal, you know? She was mine, and I wanted her. Even when my parents said they’d throw me out without a cent, it didn’t matter, because nobody was going to take my child away.” And then, turning to him, said quietly, “It wasn’t easy. It was…god, it was so difficult. My parents were hardly ever Mayfair rich, but I never knew what it was to want. And then suddenly I was hitchhiking down the highway with a bag of clothes, miserable with morning sickness. I sold my clothes for enough to pay a deposit on this awful little shanty in a tiny town outside of Austin and took a waitressing job at a diner. Have you ever seen a woman nine months pregnant waiting tables? It’s so freakin’ awkward, I was always knocking things over. I thought about calling my parents sometimes then, when I came home to my disgusting little room in the middle of the night ready to cry from exhaustion. But in the end, I was never prepared to give my child up. I never thought about it again after the first time I felt her kick, that was the moment she was a real little person and no one was ever going to take her from me. And the harder I worked to make it on my own, the more determined I was, otherwise what had it all been for? It wasn’t so bad for a while after that, I saved up enough to get to Austin and I could always find a cheap daycare, but then---god---she started to talk. I figured she’d be a witch, with your blood, I just never imagined how quickly it would start to manifest. She was hardly two when I went to pick her up from daycare and the women were freaking out because she’d been saying impossible things---like, they’d think a word, and she’d just repeat it and then laugh at the looks on their faces, over and over again.”
Here, Melody’s face went dark, her eyes flickering with some old terror as she laced her fingers together between her knees. “I panicked. I panicked bad. I didn’t know who they could tell or what anyone would do, but all the old history lessons about witch hunts and the Salem witch trials kept playing in my head, and all the stories when I was a kid about the Mayfair witches and those little whispers about storming the house, of proving it once and for all and driving the witches out. I was so terrified that I just packed our things and left that night. I…almost considered coming here, but I could already see Julien seizing custody away from me. So we went to Denver and started again and I tried to teach her to keep her abilities to herself, but you see how well that worked. Most of the time she didn’t even mean to, a boy on the playground would think something mean or her teacher would be thinking about something personal and she’d react before she even realized they hadn’t said it out loud, and then they’d freak out and people would start talking and I’d panic and bolt in the middle of the night again. But again, the more I did it and the harder it became, the more I was determined to make it work. Eventually I just sort of got used to it, and I just kept thinking that one day she would grow up enough to realize the danger she was in if she didn’t keep her mouth shut. And---” She gave a little uncomfortable sigh, clasping a hand around the back of her neck. “If I’m honest, Dorian, I didn’t want to bring her here unless I had to, not with the rumors. No one in the family ever said anything, but…I saw the way Nicolae and Antha were with each other, and it was a little too coincidental how much Mary Beth’s children look like Julien. And all the disappearances---I don’t want to think how much blood was spilled in that house. Maybe it’s all necessary, I don’t know, I have no idea what it takes for a witch family to survive, especially in a city like this. But I didn’t want to put Magdalena in the middle of all that if I didn’t have to. Maybe that was stupid, maybe she needs to be here among her own kind to be safe. But I…god, what was I talking about? Right, giving her up. Never considered it, because she’s mine and I’m her mother and every cell in my body demands that I protect her. I told you, she’s my whole world.”
And then, craning her head and suddenly taking a closer look at him, she asked, “Are you blushing, Dorian?” Slowly, quietly, a little amused grin spread across her lips. “I've heard you tell some stories that would astound sailors, but I don't think I've ever seen you blush. Is being the father of a child really that much more embarrassing than the drunken mess in the garage that made her?”  

[Okimiyage]

Dorian took a deep breath, and reached for his cup.

Quote:

Is being the father of a child really that much more embarrassing than the drunken mess in the garage that made her?

“Yes.”
He blew it all out in a word that was more sigh than proununciation.
“Because it’s the difference between one night’s…infidelity, and seven years. A thousand and more nights of not being there, when you needed someone, when Magdalena needed a father, and…” His head drooped, the dim lights bouncing off’ve his blonde curls like liquid gold.
“More than embarrassing, it’s shameful. I’m ashamed of myself. For years, I’ve been telling myself that if I ever had a kid, I would know that was when it was time to—to give all of this up, for their sake. And it turns out that I had a kid, all this time, and I didn’t even know. And now I don’t know how a father is supposed to even be like. Do I—do I discipline her, or risk her growing up an unruly wreck like I was? Do I raise her in the family, even knowing what being raised like that did to me? Do I tell her, ‘it’ll all be alright’, even when it won’t be?“ He threw his hands up at the last statement, and it was only by chance that the dregs of the wine did not splash all over his shirt. “God, Melody, I don’t know. I don’t know how you did it, all these years, all by yourself. And now that you’re here, now that you've set the standard, I don’t know how to take over.” His brow creased with worry, he looked over his shoulder at the stairs. “I don’t want to disappoint her. You’ve seen how she looks at me, like I hung the damn moon and stars, just to light her window. But—I know it’s coming, anyways: that day when she’s going to realize that I’m not some kind of almighty power, or a chapel to take sanctuary in, when she’ll be shouting and I won’t understand why, when she starts to look at me like—“
Like everyone else does.
Like a disappointment.
Dorian went quiet again, and shifted uncomfortably in his seat.
“I don't want to disappoint her. But I know that this can’t last. And there’s a part of me that doesn’t want to think about that, that just wants to savor…this, and you, and tonight. But that’s what—what being a parent is like, isn’t it? You start thinking about…consequences, about the world that you’re bringing your child into. All of a sudden, the future just seems so real, more than it ever did before. And you have to know—and if you didn’t, I would feel it’s only right to tell you—that there’s no chance in hell—“ Dorian stopped, and corrected himself. He’d have to get used to that. “—in heck that I can offer Magdalena a normal childhood.” He stopped again.
“Is there really any point in refraining from cursing around that one? She can just hear us think the bad words anyways.”  

[XCandy and LunacyX]

Melody laughed, again like a child, easy and utterly unconcerned with the seriousness of the subject matter, taking his glass and pouring him a little bit more. “You have strange ideas, do you know that? What part of Maggie’s life do you think was ever normal? She wouldn’t know normal if it was right in her face. It’s been poverty, fear, and friendlessness. You had your family growing up, and a city that turned a blind eye to anything out of the ordinary that you did. Magdalena was always alone in her…witchiness.” The last was said with a little gesture of her hands, half-throwing them up, as if it was insufficient to express everything she meant by the word but was the best she could do. “We were never settled once as far back as she remembers. She never got to make friends, so she replaced them with fairytales. That’s the closest thing to normal to her. And look at the princes in those stories, they’re really terrible people except for the brief moment of saving the princess. Otherwise they’re just, like, nothing. Pretty faces and crowns, that’s all. You don’t have much to live up to or far to fall. Outside of that…” She sighed, heavily. “Being a parent is terror personified. But what can you do? Maybe you’ll mess everything up, or maybe they’ll just turn out to have some deep character flaw you can’t save them from. But seriously, what good does worrying do? All you’ll do is make yourself crazy, and then you’re not much use to them.”
Observing Dorian’s tension then, his deep and unsettled discomfort, she gave a little sigh and took his hand, comfortingly, resting her chin in her free palm and giving him a long, steady look. “You’re a grown goddamn man, Dorian, I can’t sit here all night reassuring you of the same thing over and over again, especially when it doesn’t seem to be doing any good. You talk like she’s going to make some grand discovery about what an awful monster you are, but you’re not. I at least know that. Even back before everything happened, you weren’t a bad guy. Unreliable, sure, but how many teenagers can you really count on for anything? We were all selfish, irresponsible little pricks back then, that’s the entire reason our daughter exists. But you weren’t bad. If we’ve done anything tonight, we’ve confirmed that. You…” There was a brief moment in which she appeared uncomfortable, her gaze shifting guiltily. “You, uh…seriously could have probably stolen me back then, if you’d wanted. But you didn’t even try. You kept it to yourself so well that I didn’t even notice. An even slightly terrible person wouldn’t have done that. And if I can see that, so will Maggie.” Her lips moved to say something else, but quickly faltered, her head turning slightly to cast her gaze across the room as the faintest flush colored her cheeks. “You know, if anything I hated you for not being a bad guy. I could’ve just forgotten someone really terrible. But when you’re a single parent who’s only ever been with one guy, well…” She cleared her throat, cupping her chin and mumbling into her palm, “Other guys don’t stack up very well against you. They’re pretty dull in comparison.”  

[Okimiyage]

Suddenly self-conscious, Dorian ducked his head and gratefully accepted the second pour of wine.
“”When I was growing up,” he admitted, “I thought being normal was, well, ideal. This, this feels like throwing her into a pit of vipers. But you’re right in that…well, being on the move always can’t provide her with any sense of stability.” Not that the Mayfair household had ever been a paragon of that particular quality, but they had…endured. “Fairy tales are all well and good, but they always have happy endings. The prince kisses the princess and they ride off into the sunset, and it ends with a flourish and ‘happily ever after’. If that’s what she expects when she compares me to a prince…” he trailed off. “It’s panic-inducing. I’ve never felt pressured to live up to anyone’s expectations before now, but this is different.”
He felt a touch on the back of his hand, and glanced up to find Melody’s palm had lit upon it. “I’m not asking you to…solve my problems, or to fix my insecurities, or anything like that, Melody.” he said, quietly. No, he couldn’t expect miracles out of her. She’d done enough. “The reason why I’m telling you all this is simply because, well—I can’t tell it to anyone else. And I don’t think I can ask for advice, either, not from my family. None of them have ever been in this situation before, what could they tell me other than to get on with it?” Dorian turned his hand over, so that his palm rested against Melody’s. “And they’re right. There’s nothing to do except to go forward. But it’s important to me that, going forward, I do so with your blessing, and that I…”
Dorian, usually loquacious to a fault, suddenly found himself at a loss for the correct phrasing.
“I… want to know how to raise her, and you’re the expert in that area. I mean, how you would want her raised, so that—“ The pause here was heavy, with words that would have been too ugly to say aloud: when you’re dead. “—so you can rest easy knowing that your wishes have been honored.”
There was a part of him that still didn’t want to accept it, that wanted to accuse Vittorio of lying or pessimism, that wanted to believe he was underestimating the power of modern medicine, that wanted to believe that Mayfair Medical Research and Development would pull some deus-ex-machine kind of cure out of their vaults at the last moment. It felt like there had been too much death going around lately, like it was disease that you could catch by breathing in bad air.
“if I’m honest with myself, you’re probably right. Magdalena would forgive me even if I was a terrible father. But I wouldn’t, and…you wouldn’t either, would you? Accepting this responsibility means no half-assing it, no backing out, goofing off, or letting standards lapse. So—if I knew what those standards were—maybe the prospect of parenting wouldn’t feel quite so much like staring into the abyss as it does now.” He laughed, and shook his head. “I’m glad that you don’t think of me as dull, but you have to admit that what makes me exciting also, to most people, disqualifies me from ever being a ‘fit’ parent.” His fingers closed around hers, and squeezed. “But, at least you have faith in me. It makes more of a difference than you know.”
Meeting her eyes was a mistake. It imbued him with a terrible desire to kiss her. To ask her if he could steal her now, if only for an hour, whether she’d forgiven him enough to give him a second chance.
God, he had an instinct for complicating things. It was a bad idea, he knew, with everything else that was happening right now, but he couldn’t help the urge.  

[XCandy and LunacyX]

Melody gave something between a hum and a laugh, her free hand idly ruffling her hair. “How I want her raised? I didn’t honestly give it a lot of thought before now, I just had…sort of half-baked plans for teaching her how to be a good person. You know, compassion, kindness, not to be vain or put herself above others, manners---lord knows that one hasn’t started sticking yet. But mostly I just…” She made a little sound then, some small escape of breath from a deep, dark place that had been carved out of her long ago. “Mostly I just always wanted to make sure she knew she wasn’t alone. I wanted her to know that no matter how often we moved or how different her powers made her feel, she always had me and I always loved her unconditionally, that I wouldn’t disown her like my parents did, no matter what kind of mistake she made, or abandon her like your father did to you, or Malakai’s mother, or any of the awful parents in your family, really. That was always the most important thing. Whatever else I want for her, the only really crucial thing I need is for my daughter to never feel alone or unloved.”
When his hand turned over, her gaze fell on it, her fingers tensing even as his slid through them. “Everyone has traits that don’t usually translate into good parenting.” Her throat felt tight, and her voice came out thin as a result. “I’m ditzy, and happy-go-lucky, and…so, so not a serious person. My own daughter chastises me about not being an adult. But I have good qualities, despite that!” The last was said a touch defensively, as if she’d had this conversation on other occasions, with a more judgmental audience. “Things that make me a good parent. And you do, too. You’re still…charming, sophisticated, intelligent Dorian Mayfair.” Catching his eye, she was a little surprised to see the look in them and automatically turned her head. She’d seen that look plenty of times in the last seven years, from dates and coworkers and over-friendly neighbors, but she’d never considered them. At first it had been because of Magdalena, and then just because it had been so long that it seemed anticlimactic to give in for so little.
But they’d never made her blush. And yet somehow, anxiously trying to adjust her hair so that it fell between them, she felt the sting of blood rushing to her cheeks. “You know, I never…” She faltered, pressing her lips back into her palm and murmuring, “I never really stopped thinking about that night. And not…not because I got Maggie out of it, or anything else that happened because of it. Just…” Again she faltered, either too short of words or too embarrassed to get them out. But she did manage to turn back to look at him, her face partially obscured by hair and fingers. “It’s a bad idea, that look in your eyes. A bad, bad, bad idea, with…everything.” She swallowed, hard, her fingers tightening ever so slightly against his. “But if you’re going to look at me like that, Dorian…” A look of conflict swept across her face, her fingers sliding up along her burning cheeks and to her temple, admitting quietly, “I've barely kissed another guy in seven years. First there was a baby taking up all of my time, and then...I mean, god, how do you follow up Dorian Mayfair? Everyone else suddenly seems so dull.” Finally, swallowing her discomfort, she turned to look at him again and there was a look in her eyes, something closer to what had flashed in his own. Something quietly pleading, yearning. “I won't stop you, whatever you do. But don't look at me that way if you're going to stop yourself.”  

[Okimiyage]

Dorian’s laugh was small, and almost embarrassed. “It was obvious, then.” Apparently he'd become less adept at concealing his crush over time.
He hadn’t had nearly enough time to think about the aforementioned ‘it’ thoroughly, nor nearly enough wine to silence the warning siren that was shrieking in the back of his head. She was right. Bad idea. She’d admitted it, herself.
“Sometimes I think that the worst thing in the world is being old enough to know all the decisions that you shouldn’t make, and young enough to want to.” he murmured, almost to himself. “Young enough for recklessness.” At one point, it had been so easy. Consequences didn’t matter, because he was eighteen, he was superhuman. He would never age or die, and all those cigarettes and drinks would catch up with him, well, later. And ‘later’ had seemed so far away, back then.
And now, well…now was time to put that behind him, to own up to the mistakes he’d willfully made. To prove that he could be a different person, a better person.
Dorian put down his glass, and laid his hand along the rim of her face, curving about the her temple as though, through touch, he could take away all traces of her struggle. He could see the face of the girl that she had been, even through the years that had tested and hardened her, the face of the girl who had come to him, cleaved to him, in the middle of the night such a long time ago.
“I…” he took an unsteady breath. His next words came out in a whisper. “I really don’t want to ******** this up.”
He kissed her, then, with a tongue that tasted of wine. He brought up both hands to cradle her face, to pull her into him, and his knees hit the carpet with a deadened thump of weight as he shifted forward, slipping out of his seat. For the moment, like in Klimt’s painting, there was nothing in his head but the kiss, gilded and blissful and eternal.
When they parted, there was something starry and brilliant in his gaze. “I like your optimism,” he said, with a quiet firmness. “Or…ditziness, or whatever they want to call it. We all need someone like you in our lives, to be honest, someone to remind us that it isn’t so bad, that the world isn’t as ugly as we thought it was.” If only ‘need’ was enough, if only that word was some magical incantation that would…what? Save her? The thought was so preposterous that it would have been laughable, if it wasn’t so tragic.
He breathed out, then took a deep breath, preparing to dive.
“I never thought that there would be any second chances between us. But if there is, if you can find it within yourself to forgive me, then…” There was a touch of strain in his voice that was unusual for Dorian. He had not often pleaded with women, and it could have been dismissed as such, but the look in his eyes made it clear that this was not the case. Finally, he said, “Please.”
“I don’t want memories of what I should have done when I had the chance. If you’ll grant me that much.”
Those memories—those ghosts—had already haunted him for far too long.  

[XCandy and LunacyX]

“This time,” she conceded, somewhat abashedly ruffling her hair, “I’ve seen that look enough to know it, now. Or maybe I’m just old enough to actually be aware of it.” Melody gave a soft, nearly humorless laugh then, murmuring, “I’m not sure you can ******** it up, at this point. Not with everything that’s already happened.”
And then his lips touched hers and suddenly her mind went utterly blank. Time, space, all the reasons why this was a bad idea, wiped clean away.
At first, there was something about her reaction that was not quite hesitant, but…timid, perhaps. Inexperienced and somewhat clumsy, uncertain of herself. What little experience Melody had had at sixteen had dwindled to nearly nothing in the years since. But by the time he began to withdraw, something sparked and her hands alighted on his shoulders, pulling him back against her. Inexperience gave way to pure animal instinct and the better part of a decade of longing after a single taste of sin.
When he pulled away, her eyes fluttered open as if to remind herself of where she was, her cheeks coloring like they’d only just remembered they were supposed to. But her hands on his shoulders automatically clenched in his shirt, desperately holding him to her. “Dorian, I---” Her voice came out breathy, her mind stumbling over her words in response to his pleas. It was too difficult, trying to string together logic when suddenly her mind was searing with the desire for him to touch her, but she struggled to do it anyways. “I don’t know what it means, but…I never got that goddamn night out of my mind. If I was on a date, or someone random was looking at me like you just did, I was thinking about that night. About---about you, really. I don’t know what that means. I have nothing at all to put it into context, maybe it’s nothing, or maybe I---maybe I honestly saw you after all and I never realized it. Everything was already so ******** up, everything around it, I don’t know what anything means. But---” The color flaring in her cheeks, she gave a little sound as if she was at a loss, and murmured direly, “All I know is I’m about to die---I could die tomorrow---and I’ve wanted to do this for seven years, to the point that I thought it would drive me crazy sometimes. And it…it had to be you, somehow, for whatever reason. If I think about it, you’re the only guy I ever honestly wanted. With anyone else, it was...just trying to force myself to match them to my urges, but I couldn't, I didn't want any of them.” Self-consciously, she bit her lip, her fingers briefly tightening in his shirt as she ducked her head against his shoulder. The little whisper that came next was thin, desperate, a plea with such gravity that it might have crushed her. “It was always bearable before. I could handle it. But the longer you’re here---god, I feel like I’ll go crazy if you don’t touch me. That’s terrible, I know, I’m pretty much still that selfish teenager that used you years ago---worse, because now I know about your feelings and I don’t even know what to say to them right now---but I honestly can’t think of anything else right now besides how much I want to sleep with you.”  

[Okimiyage]

Dorian took her by the wrists, gently detaching her from his shirt like a cat who had gotten its claws stuck in the drapes. He looked at her empty hands reflectively for a moment, and then. impulsively, kissed each of her palms.
It amazed him that she had such a capacity to forgive.
“I’ve been a fool all these years, haven’t I?” he whispered.
“Hiding my feelings, hunting for love like it was a unicorn, lying to myself. I never thought that this…I never thought there was even the hope of a dream…”
Dorian stopped himself, and shook his head. He was getting distracted. But he couldn’t disguise the expression that she had prompted. There was a look on his face like that of a shipwrecked survivor, glimpsing a ship upon the horizon.
He raised her up and pulled her close to him. For a moment, it seemed as though the world narrowed, and all that he could perceive was the sigh of her breath, the intensity of her eyes. It took a tremendous effort of will not to push her back onto the couch, sweep the albums from the cushions in one savage gesture, and—
No, that wasn’t right, was it? This time, they were going to go about it properly.
He had caught a glimpse of the master bedroom through a half-cracked door before, while leading Magdalena to bed, and he tipped his head in that direction now. Then, he paused. “This isn’t going to be like last time, is it?” he said, quietly. “We’re older now, we can’t pretend that this, what’s between us, is just…hormones, or impulsiveness. Not that it was only that before, but…” He bowed his head, his breath stirring her hair. “I know this isn’t a mistake, or an accident. You were meant to be here, in my arms, all along.”
Dorian’s mouth found the curve of her jaw, and bestowed a tender kiss upon it as he raised his head.
“Come on.”
He drew her back into the darkened bedroom, would not allow her to turn on the lights. For a long time, all he did was kiss her, trailing his lips up and down her body, learning the curves and crannies of her body by touch rather than sight. Though Dorian had never been clumsy with women, he was a far cry from the boy he had been, and for many years he had found his delight in every gasp and sigh that he could coax forth from them.
But this time, despite the prior tradition, he did not ask her, are you sure?
He was certain. This felt right. Dorian’s sprees of passion were legendary, but this was something else. Something new. And when they lay together afterwards, in the dark, legs entwined and chests heaving, Dorian finally found a word that seemed fitting for that curious new sensation.
Peace.  

[XCandy and LunacyX]

Melody followed his lead without hesitation, though she did so with flushed cheeks. During the affair itself, she proved particularly responsive, if a little uncertain of herself, and afterwards nearly passed out on the spot. But something in the back of her mind prevented it, nagging her until, laying quietly in the dark, she whispered, “Dorian…you do realize…you know that we can’t have a future, right? That I…I don’t have any kind of future.” It was the last thing she wanted to say out loud, but she couldn’t bear the thought of letting him get his hopes up when she…
She was just going to die, at any given moment.
She really hadn’t expected any of this, honestly, and now she wasn’t sure how to deal with it.
The next thing she knew was waking up, the sun high and bright in the windows. For a moment, she thought her daughter was with her, until she realized with a jolt that the glint of golden hair was Dorian’s, his chest beneath her cheek, and it all came flooding back to her. It was funny, she had never woken up with anyone before, except for Magdalena. It was…reassuring, somehow.
At least until something thumped in the living room, and she realized what had woken her in the first place. With a sudden wave of panic, she shook Dorian awake and clapped a hand over his mouth, simultaneously motioning for him to be quiet and put his clothes on. As the tiny footsteps outside turned and began towards the door, she darted out of bed, throwing on a robe, and threw herself at the door a few moments before the doorknob rattled.
After a brief confused pause, Magdalena knocked on the door and called, “Mama, I know you’re awake, I can hear you moving around. Papa left his coat here.”
Melody winced---it was a stupid oversight---putting a hand to her forehead and responding as casually as she could, “Did he? That’s, ah, unfortunate. But I’m sure he has others, he’ll be fine.”
“Did you fight with him?” the child demanded then, with a distinctive huff.
“What? No! What? Why would you even---no.”
“You should learn to be sweeter,” Magdalena continued heedlessly, “Fighting with boys isn’t attractive, and you’re not getting any younger, mama.”
Melody threw the door an incredulous glance. “I am your mother, why would you even---you are six, do not give your mother dating advice! Go play with your dolls, Maggie!”
She realized her mistake almost instantly, but the damage had been done and the child seized on it immediately, the doorknob rattling again as she shrieked gleefully, “So you do want to date papa? I knew it, I knew it! There’s no way you could resist his charm, of course. What happened?! Did you kiss him? What did he say about me?!”
“I am not having this conversation, you go upstairs and play with your dolls!”
The child audibly huffed, stomping her foot and declaring, “I’m going to go stand in the street and get kidnapped, then!” Walking away, her threats resounded across the living room, “I’m adorable, and blonde, somebody will snatch me immediately! Immediately!” Regardless, the stairs creaked to signal that she was headed upstairs, her bedroom door eventually slamming, and Melody gave an exasperated sigh of relief, rolling her eyes and flipping the latch on the door to locked.
Turning her attention back to Dorian, she said direly, “You have to go before she sees you. You don’t even want to know how impossibly unbearable she is when she’s right, and this…oh god, she’ll be standing over your deathbed decades from now, reminding you of that time she was totally right about you and mama hooking up.” In the midst of this, the gleam of sun on his bare shoulders caught her eye and she fell silent for a moment, watching him, before suddenly dropping where she was, pressing her forehead to her knees. “Jesus effing Christ, you are ridiculously gorgeous. Could you just, like, not for five minutes, so I can think?” She gave another shake of her head, trying to clear it, and eventually continued calmly. “Look, we…I mean…Maggie and I are supposed to come over for dinner tonight. Antha said something about her Swedish brother coming over---I’m not even going to begin to ask questions about that---and wanted, quote, ‘normal-ish people to help even out the crazy’. Can we…” Her cheeks flushed then, as she stood upright, leaning bashfully back against the door, fiddling idly with the doorknob. “Can we talk about this then? You know, when our daughter is distracted and you’re not...half-dressed and incredibly distracting?”  

[Okimiyage]

Dorian was a light sleeper. It was a trait that he had been forced to learn over years of far less hospitable sleeping arrangements than this; but he was not a morning person, and so when he stirred to the sound of Magdalena’s tiny feet thudding down the hall towards their door, his initial reaction was to merely to groan and attempt to bury his head more securely in a pillow. That response was short-lived, however, as he found a hand suddenly seizing his mouth, and jerked upright to see sheer panic in Melody’s eyes. He almost wanted to laugh, but the hand stopped him, and he quickly wiped the smile off his face as she turned and scrambled for her robe. The ensuing conversation did not do much to prevent its return, although it was clear that neither Melody nor Magdalena found the situation as amusing as he did. Dorian did not quite dare to move, fearing that the rustling of fabric might give away his presence, and it was only when Melody turned back to him that he lifted up out of the sheets. The curtains had not yet been hung on the windows, and the morning sun captured him like a Rembrandt, making a halo out of his mussed and golden hair. He watched her through eyes still heavy-lidded with sleep, his arms crossed over the pillows under him. “Shall I go out the window, then?” he asked, lightly. It was a joke, but also a real question. At least they were only on the first floor. “I have to admit, this is the first time a child’s arrival has demanded this sort of clandestine egress.” Normally, it was a jealous husband. Then again, what had he expected? Breakfast and coffee with the two of them? A small voice inside piped up, that would be nice, but he ignored it. Unsheathing himself from the sheets, he swung his legs over the side of the bed and reached for his trousers, where they had been discarded along with his other garments in a hurried head. “You don’t think this is merely putting off the inevitable, do you? She’ll learn about this, us, at some point. I mean…” Dorian put his feet through either leg of his pants, drew them up, and then tilted his head up at Melody. His eyes narrowed slightly.
“Do you want this to be a secret? I won’t say anything, if you’d like, but…” He left the thought unfinished. “You know, it’s more difficult to lie to Lena than I thought it would be.” Not just for the sake of her ‘talents’, but because…well, it felt wrong to keep the truth from his daughter. Even if she was insufferably smug about being right, she had been right.
Picking up his shirt and shrugging it on, he started doing up the buttons. “I suppose this is part of that conversation that we’d better leave for later, isn’t it?” His eyes crept towards the door, lingered for a half-a-second too long. “You have more than enough distractions this morning.”
Dorian toed his shoes on, crossed to the window, and lifted the sill. His legs were over it in one practiced movement, fluid as a dancer, and then he paused. “Just…think about it, alright? I’ll see you at dinner.”  

[XCandy and LunacyX]

“Dorian---” Melody gave a groan, rolling her eyes at the guilt trip and crossing the room to grab his arm. “Don’t do that,” she sighed, dropping her head on his shoulder. “I…look, it’s not like I’m trying to hide it. I mean I am, at right this moment, but…” She gave another little groan, smaller and more abrupt this time, struggling to find the right way to put it. “Magdalena is young and very impressionable, and history aside, we’ve been here for like a day. You’ve seen the way she already is with boys, if she sees you here this morning, in this situation, she’s going to take it as license to jump into bed with any hot guy right away when she’s older. Just…trust me, okay? I know our daughter, she needs to find out the right way. And this…it’s different if she sees you right now, Dorian. I mean, last night was lovely.” Her cheeks flushed at the mere mention of it. “But it’ll turn into something else if she sees you right now. It’s…hard to explain.” Finally, she sighed and laid a soft, brief kiss on his lips, murmuring gently, “You said it wasn’t going to be like last time, right? I mean, it’s not, but it looks like it from the outside, you know? Especially with our history. And I really, really wasn’t expecting any of this, my head is kind of spinning and I need a minute to process. All I’m asking for is the chance to control how this comes off to Maggie. And, honestly…” She grimaced, as if it was hard to say, finally murmuring, “I don’t want Malakai to find out like this. He’s going to take it hard, you do realize that? We’ve already betrayed him exactly like this before, the least we can do is tell him honestly this time, before he hears it somewhere else. And if Maggie finds out, she’s going to tell Lawrence, and Lawrence is Malakai’s best friend, and…can we just work out something where this stays between us right now but also you don’t look at me like a b***h who used you and then threw you out the window?”
In the kitchen nearby, the refrigerator door open and closed, Magdalena sighing and calling, “Mama, we don’t have any food! I’m ordering Chinese food, do you want orange chicken? Where’s your purse, I need your credit card.”
“Maggie, will you hang on one minute?” her mother called, exasperated. Turning back to Dorian, she pressed a kiss to his cheek and said quietly, “I’ll see you tonight.”

When Dorian returned home, he had all of about three seconds to himself, long enough to close the door before turning back around and finding his cousins standing at the top of the stairs, leering at him.
“Jackie,” Courtland said, his gaze narrowing at Dorian as the suggestive Cheshire grin stretched across his face, “How long is the walk from Melody’s house, do you think?”
Jack mockingly pursed his lips, pretending to think. “It took Cyrus about twenty minutes, I think. So about five minutes in a cab.”
“Interesting!” Courtland exclaimed then, smugly amused, “Here I was thinking it took all night! So, tell me then, if Dorian wasn’t walking home all night…what do you think he was doing?”
“All night?” Jack repeated, fist to chin, his brows furrowing dramatically, “At Melody’s house? Gee, I’m not sure. What could Dorian possibly spend all night doing with Melody…?”
Pierce interrupted their little act then, responding seriously, “He could have crashed on their couch. Maybe Magdalena wore him out.”
But Courtland simply shot him a flat look, holding his hand out. “Get your head out of your a**, Pierce.”
The boy scowled, reaching into his pocket and taking out a few bills that he stuffed irritably into Courtland’s outstretched fingers. “I really didn’t think she would cave so soon…” Behind them, a similar exchange happened wordlessly from Armand to Antha, the former nodding with a little sigh as if he agreed.
“Putting that aside,” Antha interrupted, turning and gently setting her daughter in Cian’s arms, “Back to the nursery, all of you, and not another word about all of this. You---” Her eyes narrowed at Dorian, crooking a finger for him to follow her, “---come on.”
Shutting them in the library---she waited a moment, long enough for Courtland and Jack to creep up and press their ears to the door, before kicking it hard enough that they scrambled away yelping---she gestured for him to take a seat at the desk while she took the seat opposite, leaning back with her fingers steepled beneath her chin, all business. “Dorian---” She gave a little sigh, pausing to rearrange her thoughts. “Are you trying to destroy yourself again?” she said finally, casting him a keenly concerned look. She didn’t bother mentioning the particulars---that Melody was about to die, that she was the mother of his child, the history she had with Malakai, how it had turned the family against him the last time they’d hooked up---it was all in her eyes, and she trusted him to realize the obstacles.
Sighing, she shook her head and leaned forward, her arms folding over neatly stacked paperwork on the desk, and began calmly, “Alright, first things first. Malakai will be here at four o’clock. This entire thing has already driven him from his own home, and seven years ago it nearly destroyed him. You do not speak to Melody---you don’t even look at her---or anyone else for that matter, until you talk to him about this. You have to explain to him what actually happened back then, he needs to know that you had feelings for her, that you didn’t screw him over for absolutely nothing. That is an order from your designee, it needs to be your top priority if anyone is going to move past this whole mess. Now…”
Here she fell quiet, clasping her hands and leaning her head over them, eyes flashing rapidly with thought. She opened her mouth several times with the intention to speak and then stopped herself ruminatively. Finally, giving a little sigh, she sat back and settled a heavy gaze on Dorian. “Ask me,” she said quietly, with the sort of severe seriousness of someone asking another person to make a life-altering choice. “I’m not saying I can do anything. The overwhelming chances are that I can’t, that nothing can be done and it’s hopeless. But…” Her eyes narrowed, hands folding together. “Ask me, Dorian. If you’re willing to do anything, to sacrifice anything---if you honestly love her and you’re prepared to do whatever it takes, then ask me to save her. Nothing comes to mind, and maybe there is nothing, but I won’t try for her, and I sure as hell won’t try for the sake of being charitable. Conventional medicine is out, and most experimental medicine, as well as any basic channels of magic. If there's anything that can save her, it's going to be...radical, and I would have to dig deep to find it. But if you ask me, and you’re willing to do whatever it takes…then I’ll try for you, Dorian. Only for you, and only if you're willing to pay whatever the price is. You just have to ask me.”  

[Okimiyage]

Dorian stopped, put his hand over hers where she had grabbed his arm. “Melody, you don’t need to explain.” he said, quietly. “I trust you. And on some level, you must trust me, or else you wouldn’t have given me a second chance.” He lifted her hand, pressed the back of it briefly to his lips, and then let her go. “I won’t disappoint you.”
Then, with a faint rustling of fabric, and a soft thump onto the grass below, he was gone.

While Dorian had half-expected to receive a good ribbing from the cousins upon his return to the house, he hadn’t expected it to be as soon as he stepped in the door. Upon discovering the ambush, he made the exclamation, “Oh, for the love of—“, then scowled, and folded his arms defensively. He let them go back-and-forth for a little while, before interrupting with the icy intonation.
“The way you all carry on about other people’s sex lives or lack thereof, one might conclude that your own are appallingly boring. I mean, good lord, Courtland, haven’t you anything better to do than fleece Pierce of his life savings?”
Although Pierce really should have been wise enough to avoid that bet. Did they think that Dorian was losing his touch? He was mildly offended by even the thought.
“Look, just clear the stairs,” he grumbled at last, advancing towards them with a glare that would have been menacing if he wasn’t so pretty. “I need a shower.”
But instead, waylaid by Antha, he ended up being ushered into the library. Dorian might have tried to escape—the thought briefly occurred— but he could tell by the authoritarian gleam in her eye that this would not have gone over well.
Although she had gestured to the chair, he settled on top of the desk, swinging his legs idly but careful not to make contact. Oncle Julian was too attached to his antique furniture, he would have had an aneurysm over any scuff-marks.
Are you trying to destroy yourself again? startled him into looking up at her.
He had thought this was going to be a serious conversation, but Dorian could not help laughing. “Quite the opposite, actually. I know how…questionable…it looks, but it’s true.”
Antha wasn’t laughing, though.
After a moment, he let his hands fall to grip the rim of the desk, and looked away.
“I get it, alright? I’m only making this more complicated. It isn’t on purpose, it’s just…this is the way things have to be. If I went on without ever knowing, without ever—trying, then it doesn’t matter what heartache I saved myself or anyone else. Regret would only take its place.” His fingers rubbed over the carved, bevelled edges of the desk, ridges worn smooth by countless years of caressing, and he shut his eyes. “Maybe it is selfish, but it’s the only opportunity I have.”
Or at least, the only opportunity that had presented itself. And they were so short on time that he couldn’t afford to be picky.
But he wasn’t stupid enough to deny the designee, either. And so it was that, with only a brief pause after her ultimatum was delivered, Dorian nodded shortly.
What came next, though, was a proposition much more difficult to predict.
“I…what?” For a moment, he gaped at her like a fish, then remembered to shut his mouth. “You’re not serious. Antha—“ No, she was serious. He’d only seen that expression on her face a handful of times in his life, but it never preceded merriment.
Dorian’s face was an education. He couldn’t decide whether he wanted to yell at her or—or burst into Disneyesque ballad. He struggled with the monumental task of composing himself for several moments, and finally gave it up as a lost cause. “Anyone else, I’d tell them not to play with my hopes.” he said, darkly. Then, “How certain are you? That this will work?” he challenged her, wheeling about and fixing her with a gaze that had all the intensity of a blue sun. “I have to know. I need to know what the consequences are, Antha, I can’t just…rush in headlong like I used to. A week ago, if you’d asked me, I would have said yes, anything, because I had nothing to lose. But I’m a father now, and…and I know how these games work, Antha. I’m too ******** old not to have figured it out by now.” His fist knocked against the desk, emphatically. “You don’t ask for whatever it takes unless there’s going to be a price to pay, or a risk, or something that most people who weren’t desperate would flinch at. That’s the cost of magic. It always takes away something, sometimes more than it gives.” He was staring at the desk now, the pile of paperwork, but his eyes were distant. “And even knowing that…” Dorian shook his head.
“I still want to ask. What does it take? What do you need? And why—why now? You knew she was sick, but…if I hadn’t…expressed interest, would you have offered her the same?”  

[XCandy and LunacyX]

Antha answered without a moment of hesitation. “No.” Her eyes flashed, briefly gleaming with that cold, dark light that they all knew she had in her but rarely saw, the girl who would cut someone else’s lifeline to save herself, or someone she loved. “No, I wouldn’t have offered to help her. Her condition is hopeless, Dorian, do you even realize what it’s going to take for me just to look for a solution that probably doesn’t exist? In all probability, nothing will save her. The only theory I have…” She sighed, glancing off towards the bright windows, the thoughts racing through her eyes. “It’s as likely to kill her immediately as to save her, and the very act of attempting it is going to cost me dearly. So no, I never would have tried to help her for her sake, or even Magdalena’s. Not with what little time I have left, and not when it means giving up resources that the family might sorely need when I’m gone. I was rather hoping it wouldn’t even come up, but…” Her gaze drifted back over to Dorian, softening just slightly, and she sighed. “You’re caught, I can see that. As little interest as I have in taking radical measures to save Melody, I am willing to do it to save you the deep hurt her death would cause you. I’ll be very clear---I’m offering to look into it. I can’t promise you anything else. I won’t risk your life, or the wellbeing of your children, but outside of that…you have to be willing to do whatever it takes, Dorian. That’s why you have to ask, because you have to decide what her life is worth to you before it comes to it. Those are the only answers I have for you, it’s all I can give you. So you have to decide…” She sat back then, legs crossed, hands folded on her knee, eyes narrowing. “Ask me to try to save her, or walk out the door without a word. If you don’t have the commitment to say it now---” She sighed, gaze flickering. “---you never will. You’re either willing to pay the price, whatever it may be, or you’re not. You know the answer, Dorian…don’t second-guess yourself. Ask me, or leave and make your peace with it.”