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A month or two into the dream
It is a few months into the new normal. It is no longer a ship lost at sea, though Dorian still feels like one. The moments come about as frequently as he thought they might, but it is the ferocity of the feeling that still takes him by surprise.
He has been quiet on the walk back down the Heart Tree with Zachary. They have spent the afternoon at Zachary’s mother’s house. As they do every Sunday. It has been a few months into this new normal. But Dorian still feels like a ship lost at sea.
Zachary doesn’t seem to have noticed anything wrong, though Dorian realised pretty quickly into this relationship he’s found himself in that he is very much capable of underestimating just how much Zachary notices.
About him especially. How does this man seem to understand him - to see him so acutely when he has made such a business for so long of not being seen? When he barely understands himself.
“You okay?” Zachary has asked him - possibly several times, judging by the gentle tug of his eyebrows up into an arch of concern.
Dorian blinks at him, standing there in the kitchen of their apartment, filling a glass up with water - as he usually does when he’s beginning to think about heading to bed.
It’s maybe this tiny detail - recognising something from his partner that he registers as marking a routine - this irrefutable sign of having been in one place long enough to develop such a thing - a routine - let alone being alongside one person long enough to recognise someone else’s - that pushes him from pensive to bewildered.
He nods with a quick smile. “Yeah, just… I might go for a bit of a walk. I’ve got quite a bit of energy,” he says nonchalantly, glancing around as if he did not notice Zachary’s eyebrows drop from concern to shrewd scepticism. “You go ahead to bed, though. I won’t be too long,” he smiles, stepping over to him and kissing him lightly.
Zachary moves towards him like he wants to pull him in for a deeper kiss, but that will make him cry. That will make him cry, for heaven’s sake. This has happened twice already this week. Zachary needs slightly less of that, almost certainly.
“Dorian-”
But there’s something about the familiarity of the name that all of a sudden feels like it doesn’t fit him - like he doesn’t deserve for that name in that voice to feel the way it does, settling back over him like a favourite sweater.
So he steps back, giving Zachary a smile that he knows looks exactly like all his others.
Zachary takes a sip of his water, gazing at him.
“Really, I know I seem a bit… frazzled. I think I’m just… yeah. Need to walk it off. Really, I’m okay,” he smiles again. Zachary narrows his eyes.
“Well, I’ve got a very excellent book to get back to, so I’ll be reading. Come join me, yeah?” Zachary says, clearly deciding not to push it today. For which Dorian is grateful.
“I will,” Dorian says, reaching for his hand almost in spite of himself. Almost because he hardly believes he will really be there.
But he is, smiling at him and squeezing his fingers. This marvel of a man. A miracle, living and breathing before him. He wants to pull him into his arms and feel that heart beating against his chest. To feel his breath at his neck the way he has been privileged to for so many nights now, still not quite believing that this is something he will get to keep. Loving him in their bed each night as if it were the cabin of a ship, lost on a honey sea - clinging to each other as if there may never be anything else, ever again.
It was almost easier then, Dorian thinks as he leaves the apartment a moment later, leaving his shoes in the alcove, ignoring the sword held in the brackets above the doorway. Lost at sea, fallen out of time - just them and a couple of lost storybook souls, on a ship made of dreams. They had routines, yes. Small ones. Ones that more closely resembled the kinds of routines he has been able to wind tightly through his life no matter the pace of the chaos.
Like shaving in the morning, no matter which sink - safehouse, headquarters, hotel hotel hotel. Or reading before sleep, no matter the bed - sleeper train, briefly secured empty house, hotel hotel hotel. The only surety the escape in books, the only ground beneath his feet the square footage he landed on with each pounding push of a next step - running at full tilt for so, so long.
And now a man who may in fact be the love of his life is behind him, brushing his teeth and taking his glasses off, washing his face - maybe taking a quick shower. Walking back into the bedroom in just his pyjama pants. Settling into bed, maybe pulling a shirt on if he’s cold, putting his glasses back on and picking up his book.
And waiting for him. Peacefully. A place he is expected to land.
His heart is racing as if to give voice to the truth that he has no idea how to slow down. Let alone stop.
Dorian heaves in a deep breath. He has barely made it halfway down a single revolution of the walkway that winds around the Heart Tree. He wipes his streaming eyes with a frustrated hand and runs the rest of the way, feet carrying him down two or three wide wooden steps at a time.
It is quiet in the Harbour. Kat dreams it filled with people, and they are working hard to make it happen, but it makes the stillness all the more precious. This kingdom that is theirs, all theirs for the moment. Like a dream.
Why? Why has he of all people been given a kingdom? Why would Fate, who had stared him in the face and found him lacking, give him so much stillness?
Dorian runs across the antechamber, the flagstones cool beneath his bare feet. There was a little truth in what he said to Zachary, and it feels good to run - to move - to work out the frustration - to try to outpace the - well, he doesn’t really know what the feeling is.
Until he comes to a stop outside the double doors at the base of the tree, standing before the beautiful, peaceful garden that gives way to the Starless Sea.
He realises he has gone the wrong way - if he wanted to keep running he should have headed upwards and hit a bridge, then crossed the lake and disappeared into the woods.
Instead he has come to a stop and discovered what it is he actually needed.
Which was to cry.
He walks the few light marble steps down to the path as his eyes well with tears. And by the time he reaches the pier he is sobbing.
He stands there for a moment, crying openly. He remembers the ship, dropping them off here, in the heart of their new home. This quiet, beautiful kingdom. He remembers embarking with Zachary, hand in hand with him as they first set foot in this Harbour, not imagining that Kat had beaten them to it by minutes.
He remembers sailing that honey sea. The impossible security of being allowed to believe that you are truly lost.
And being lost with Zachary. Being lost to the world and alone in the arms of the only lover he has ever needed the way he needs air. Having their certainties in step with each other. Knowing the other can dream of a long-gone world, but sharing the grief of knowing that it is very likely they will never be anywhere else. Allowing each other to be enough for that cluttered, cosy, warm, wood-smoke and caramel scented cabin. The books, the rug, the table Lenore had bolted to the floor. The meals on the deck of the ship with the four of them. Lying with Zachary on the blankets on the deck and watching Lenore waltz with Simon. Lovers each in their own worlds, sharing a private space together that even the sun and moon had not interrupted.
The long, endless nights when they would lie together and tell stories. The pirate bunny king and the man lost in time, and himself and Zachary. Floating along the surface of the myth. Sinking into the storybook slowly but surely. A kind of unreality. A kind unreality. Needing only each other and the stories. Needing the honey and no other light. Needing him and no other love.
And then.
Zachary had stepped so easily from the deck of the storybook ship back into the real world. Even this strange luminous kingdom, by his side, feels somehow real. Stable. The way he settles into it like it is a favourite novel.
The first month or so Dorian had been in awe. Wondering how he could adjust so fast. Humbled to realise that Zachary had in fact transferred readily into a life that had given him so much more than he wanted - he had been prepared to lose so much more than Dorian ever had just to keep him. So getting so much of it back - his mother, his friend, the sunlight - was a gift he was delighted to cherish.
A sob catches in Dorian’s throat. He sits down on the marble step.
He can see it so clearly in his mind. Zachary curled up in their bed - their bed, that they share together - reading. The way the low lamplight colours his skin a little golden. The way his curls flop to the side as he leans on an elbow, shifting position to get comfortable. The way, if Dorian doesn’t return to him in an hour or so, he will close his book, set his glasses on top of it, and shuffle down, turning the lamp off and closing his eyes, falling into sleep, face peaceful in the deep blue of a dreaming night.
Dorian puts his head in his hands and cries.
There is the terror. In that image. That somehow in his stillness Zachary is pulling away in this race - so far ahead of him, who is floundering. Uncertain of how to build a life like this. Uncertain of how often one is allowed to weep openly on their partner about this feeling of finally, finally landing. Uncertain of how to come to a stop without breaking.
It is clear from however many nights now of sleeping beside him that Zachary is happy in quiet. He is content in stillness. And no matter how badly Dorian wants that, he has no idea how to do it. He doesn’t know how to come to a stop without crying.
That may have always been true. He has moved so ceaselessly in part because furious purpose reframes escape into something noble. The Collector’s Club had suited him - sending him back and forth across the face of the world, making good use of his restlessness. His inability to confront this longing for a home he didn’t have rendered an asset as it pushed him into motion.
But it is good to cry about it. Probably good, too, to spare Zachary this. Zachary who will be sleeping soundly by the time he returns. So if that, too, makes a mockery of his fortitude then at least he will be alone with it. As alone as he is sure he has always been.
“Yeah, I thought so.”
Dorian jumps, twisting around, half rising to his feet. But Zachary’s footfall had been quiet enough that in all his weeping he had not heard him approach.
He has a sweater on - one they had recently brought down into the Harbour from the piles of his old things Kat had rescued from Vermont - and his pyjama pants. He is barefoot. He is smiling gently at him, a hand on his shoulder encouraging him to stay seated on the step.
“I - I’m sorry. Zachary, I’m sorry-”
Zachary sits down beside him, looking out across the Starless Sea. Dorian is wiping at his face - at his nose, a little mortified at the state he is in in front of him. Mortified to have been caught like this, in the grip of a devastating vulnerability.
“Don’t apologise. You’re okay. It’s okay,” Zachary says, and that hand strokes down his back a little. The feeling is so welcome - so familiar - that it tears at Dorian a little further.
What if this is something he never learns? What if familiarity is always shocking? And Zachary - the most important man in his life - settles onto the firmness of solid ground and he is left there, rocking on the deck of an uncertain ship, lost at sea.
“Dorian,” Zachary says, and Dorian looks up at him. Those warm brown eyes behind his glasses. “You’re struggling. I know you are. I… well, I’ve been tryna work out whether you need space or you just want space and actually need support - but then I realised you weren’t communicating that because you yourself have no idea. So I’m here. And I wanna help.”
Dorian stares at him. Zachary has taken his hand. “Please let me help? Please talk to me?”
It takes him a moment. “I… I’m not good at this, Zachary. I don’t mean to shut you out - not even a little bit. I… You deserve better than that, really, and I am sorry for that-”
“No, nuh uh. Bad approach,” he says, a light humour in his smile. “You don’t need to apologise for this.”
There must have been enough panic in the look Dorian shoots him, because his face softens. He tugs on Dorian’s hand, moving him around a little to hold both hands in his own. Dorian grips him.
Zachary is gazing at their conjoined hands. At the way Dorian is clinging to him the way they had both clung to each other on the ship. As if he sees the way his own grip has lessened in the time since coming ashore. And understands that Dorian feels like he is still clinging on for dear life.
“Don’t think I don’t know, Dorian, how hard you are having to work at this.” He looks up at him. He looks thoughtful. He looks kind. Dorian’s eyes fill with tears and he blinks furiously. How is it that gentleness can be so, so painful? “Don’t think I don’t see how alien this is to you. I… I want to help by like, being stable enough that you feel anchored, but maybe that’s not what you need…”
“Zachary-” Dorian is embarrassed at how scratchy his voice is, throat full of tears. He clears his throat and tries again. “I barely know what I need. I feel like - like I’m trying to put a life together for the first time. And I want - I don’t want - I want you to feel like you are getting a life you really want - I don’t want you to - to regret… this.”
Me.
Zachary clearly hears what he almost said in the way he is shaking his head. In the way he touches his face. He leans in, resting his forehead against Dorian’s. “Absolutely nothing could make me regret you. Nothing. Not even death.”
Dorian gives a shaky laugh. His breath tastes like mint toothpaste and honey and warmth. He breathes deeply and closes his eyes, Zachary’s skin against his, his hand at his neck.
“I love you, Dorian. And you can take your time. You can take as long as you need. I will not get bored, I will not be disappointed. And I will absolutely never be sick of seeing you cry.”
Dorian opens his eyes, positively confused by this one. And finds that Zachary is smiling at him as he sits back.
“I love this. I mean, I hate how hard it is for you - I hate all the loneliness I can see in that. I hate that that’s what you’ve had for so much of your life. But every time it makes you cry I… I can’t help but feel like something loosens, you know?” Zachary squeezes his hand.
“That… maybe,” Dorian is uncertain.
“So don’t hide it from me. Please? Don’t make me chase it. I - man, Dorian, I want to be here. I want to be by your side helping you work this out. I want you to come to me and sob if you need to - every single time a routine or a simple thing hurts or feels overwhelming. I want to hold you in it. Please?”
Dorian slowly finds it in himself to nod, and then gives in to the need within himself to fall completely into Zachary’s arms, right there on the step.
He is crying again. Because Zachary has just told him he is allowed to. Because it is apparently not too much for him - and if Dorian cannot trust him, then there really is nobody.
And he finds that that trust is solid ground. That there, lying in his lover’s arms on the steps of the new Harbour upon the Starless Sea, he can feel that the earth has stopped moving. That maybe the ship has come into port.
He finds himself telling him the thousand and one things from the past few days that have felt like needles of accusation - things that he shouldn’t notice as hard as he does - how they have caught at him and bled into him a thousand reasons Zachary might take issue with how weak, how vulnerable, and how startlingly foolish Dorian really is about it all.
And Zachary holds him, cradling his head in his lap, stroking his hair, and pushing back at every single one of them with a kind of love that even lost at sea, deep below the world, had made Dorian feel grounded.
“Frankly, it is some pretty impressive mental gymnastics, really. Taking so many of the reasons you are one of the most astonishingly strong people I have ever known and using them as evidence of some weird weakness. Dorian. You have barely ever had a home. You have never had to physically settle. I wouldn’t be surprised if you just screamed every time I put a mug back in the same place. You know I have been like, a little concerned that you weren’t more unsettled?”
“Oh my word, that’s exactly the word,” Dorian sits up, having mostly cried himself out. Zachary smiles at him, scrunching his sweater sleeve over his hand and wiping his nose for him. And it is such a caring, intimate gesture that Dorian laughs. “Unsettled. I feel unsettled. And I am so - god, Zachary, I am just so constantly bewildered at how the act of settling itself can be - well, unsettling. I am so confused. I just feel. I feel young and naive and confused and like I am having to run so hard just to slow down. And it’s-”
Zachary has lifted a hand to his face. And the words fall away from him at that touch.
He looks at him. Simply looks.
“You are so beautiful,” Zachary says after a while. “You deserve a home. And I would love it if it was with me. And I am committed to every last second of making that happen for you. I am in love with you.”
Dorian stares at him. There it all is. What is offered to him by this man.
“Please,” Zachary adds, exactly as Dorian wonders if he has the courage to take it.
“Well,” Dorian clears his throat again. “I’m in love with you, too, as it turns out. So, if you don’t mind the crying-”
“I don’t.”
“Even if it’s every day-”
“Or several times a day, that’s cool too.”
“And you don’t mind me getting overwhelmed by the strangest things-”
“Not a bit.”
“And… and you’re happy to hold me…”
Zachary beams at him. “Oh, I absolutely am.”
“Well then,” Dorian whispers as Zachary pulls him back into his arms. “Okay.”
“I’m gonna help you find ways to feel at home. Little things. So many little ways. One at a time,” Zachary promises fiercely, whispering it into his hair. “I love you.”
“I love you too,” Dorian says into his sweater.
“Hey. You know when ships - really big ones - ocean liners - are launched, and the water displacement is violent? And the ship rocks madly for a moment and you definitely think it’s gonna capsize, and how will the ocean ever go back to normal again with a landing of that magnitude. But it does. It rights itself all of a sudden, and then it is steady.”
“Exactly how many times have you seen an ocean liner get launched, Zachary Ezra?” Dorian asks in amazement.
Zachary grins. “The internet is a wonderful place. But maybe it’s like that, you know. Displacement. Something massive settling in.”
“And all the watershed is a necessary part of the displacement as the ocean waves adapt to the new normal?” Dorian asks wryly, but even as he says it he realises it feels true. And something in his chest seems to gasp into a kind of hope at this sudden understanding. His eyes fill with tears again - but it’s just displacement.
“Yeah,” Zachary says softly, and kisses him. Just a light kiss, but Dorian pulls himself up and deepens it, sitting fully upright on the step to pull Zachary towards him, tasting him, needing him. In love. In love enough to come to a complete stop.
“I’ve always been too afraid to slow down, I think,” Dorian murmurs to him.
Zachary doesn’t reply immediately, gazing at him, a little starry-eyed. “Hmm?”
Dorian chuckles.
“Oh, I was fully distracted by you kissing me. Which, feel free to resume. Or - or I’m happy to talk more,” he adds quickly. Earnestly.
Dorian laughs.
He leans in to kiss him again. But he pauses, close enough to give him the words in a whisper of a breath. “You are the only home I have ever wanted. Thank you for being patient with me.”
“It’s pretty easy to be patient with you. You make me happy,” Zachary whispers back.
“You make me unafraid. Unafraid of facing so much grief and so much displacement.”
“Oh.”
Dorian kisses him. Like they have left the ship behind and are now sat here together on solid ground, in front of the pier where this chapter of their life together had begun.
And in the way Zachary sighs between his lips, pulling him closer like he is completely at home, Dorian remembers that even ships have anchors. A way to stop. A way for stillness to bely even the sea.
Like solid ground, rising through the honey.
Dorian pulls him closer.