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It takes three tries for Orym to finally get Ashton’s attention from the alcove where he’s stationed himself so he can see the whole room and still stay close enough to Dorian. It’s another few minutes still before Ashton can shake off their throngs of admirers. Orym supposes Ashton never considered that nobility tend to like the strange and unusual when they don’t know any better than to think it’s harmless to them. Still, he watches as they pass into the shadows behind him and disappear from sight.
“How’s it going?” Ashton asks from the dark, dropping their voice into a deeper rasp that might be as much an effect of the smoke in the room as an attempt to mask their real identity.
“Not a hitch.” It’s an understatement, but the important thing is they’re done and now they only have to make an orderly exit so as not to attract attention. Which means Dorian is still playing the charming not-prince and Orym is still on guard duty.
“How’s our boy doing?”
Orym doesn’t take his eyes off Dorian, keeping his face impassive when he answers, “Could be better.”
“He sure as fuck is going to be when we’re done.”
“Did you get enough?”
There’s a rattling noise behind him, like Ashton is sorting through a bag of stones. Which – well, Orym supposes that’s exactly what they’re doing. He keeps his back straight and his eyes forward. Ashton promised to take care of the details of this, as long as Orym takes care of Dorian.
“Couple more passes through the room ought to do it.” Orym feels body-warm leather graze his elbow, just a passing touch he thinks is supposed to be reassuring. “Go ahead and pull him. I’ll go up the back stairs.”
“One day you’re going to explain why you already know the layout of this place.”
“Same day you explain your whole fucking thing, you Zephranian asshole.”
Orym strides away from the alcove without correcting Ashton the way he ordinarily would and he doesn’t look back. He slides into his place at Dorian’s side, doing his level best to look quietly menacing like the bodyguard he’s supposed to be tonight because that’s what Dorian needs him to be.
“How are you doing?”
“Oh, you know,” Dorian says with the kind of false lightness that makes Orym’s skin crawl, knowing that it’s what he does when he’s covering his true feelings about something.
“I don’t know, actually,” Orym finally says, realizing that Dorian isn’t going to continue.
Dorian looks down at him quickly, his shoulders pulled tight up toward his ears, his hands folded behind his back in something approximating parade rest. Tense and straight-backed, this person, this Brontë Secondsun Wyvernwind he’d been announced as, doesn’t look anything like Dorian. He looks back out at the dancers out on the floor with obvious longing.
“Wish I’d had that third drink,” Dorian finally says in a voice for only Orym to hear, shaping the air around them the way he does to carry his words. It’s a trick he’s done before, but it’s for survival here. “Wish I had a lot more than that.”
“What if we skipped the rest of this performance?” Orym gestures to the wide, curved staircase that leads up to the private rooms they’ve been assigned, each suite larger than Orym’s entire cottage back home in Zephrah by double.
“But we could – Orym, there are people from every Mahaan house in Jrusar here.” Dorian looks quickly out at the ballroom, a vacuous smile passing over his face when one of those nobles looks him over with unabashed appreciation of the figure he cuts in this stupid, stiff uniform that doesn’t suit him at all.
They could stay, try and learn more about the forces moving within the city. Courtly gossip is one of the most valuable sources of information Orym can think of, but it’s been hours and the nobles are all past the point where their drunkenness will yield anything interesting. Most importantly, however, is that Dorian is miserable, and Orym has a way of helping with that.
“I don’t care about them.” Not caring who might see them now, Orym reaches for his hand and squeezes once, leaving the other half unsaid: that the only one he cares about right now is Dorian. “My job is to get you out of here.”
For the first time, Dorian actually looks down to Orym’s face, and it’s as if he’s not entirely comprehending what he’s seeing. And then, finally, Dorian follows.
Orym counts the steps until they’re out of the main hall, until they pass the last alcove on the way to their rooms. This place is extraordinarily beautiful: alabaster marble and gold trim, mosaics so intricately rendered that they seem like paintings until Orym is close enough to see the individual jeweled fragments. Yet he ignores everything but the single-minded duty of delivering Dorian to the room designated for his use, dismissing the attendant with a firm, “That’s all, thank you.”
Once the door to the suite is shut behind them, Dorian inhales shakily. When Orym looks up at him, he has the heels of both hands pressed into his eyes, as though he’s processing the entire evening at once.
“Let me help you out of that,” Orym offers, leading him toward the bedroom two rooms over.
Standing in front of a looking glass, staring at his reflection, Dorian removes all the heavy, gold jewelry he’s wearing with obvious disdain. None of it suits his usual silver ear cuffs, the delicate rings he wears through his nipples, that pearl necklace he’d longed for so much…
Orym’s not tall enough to reach the buttons on Dorian’s jacket, but he kneels beside Dorian and helps him out of his stiff, polished boots and throws them to one side. Dorian just manages the last of the buttons on his jacket before Orym hears the door to the suite close and bolt.
“That will be Ashton with your surprise.”
Dorian looks away from his somber reflection, down to Orym with both eyebrows up. “A surprise?”
Orym hums, standing up behind Dorian and turning his hips so he’s facing the mirror again while he unbuckles his belt, pushing these absurd breeches away.
“Getting started without me?”
Orym is glad to see they’re wearing a giddy expression when they saunter through the high, arched doorway. Ashton’s removed their mask and gloves, presumably leaving both elsewhere in the suite. Like Fearne, petty theft always seems to put Ashton in a good mood.
“Just getting our boy back.”
Ashton pauses beside the looking glass just long enough to peek over Dorian’s shoulder at his reflection and Orym catches the momentary lapse in their grin at what they see.
Dorian’s expression is still severe, although Orym supposes he can’t help it with his hair pulled back as tightly as it is. The collar of his unbuttoned jacket is still high at his neck, a starched cloth folded austerely at his throat. His eyes are heavily rimmed in dark kohl, which has a leaden effect on his countenance.
When Ashton chances a look down at Orym, he looks back for a single second before rededicating himself to freeing Dorian. Lifting one of Dorian’s knees, Orym removes the breeches and pushes them to the side so he can roll off Dorian’s stockings.
Ashton yanks at the thong holding Dorian’s hair back in a tight braid until it comes loose, strokes one hand through until it’s loose around his shoulders. They pull at the hated jacket and throw it into a corner of the room with malice, then begin unlacing the waistcoat.
At long last, when Ashton has just lifted the loose linen shirt over Dorian’s head, Orym straightens and rests one hand on the small of Dorian’s back, his fingertips grazing the dimples there fondly.
“There you are,” Ashton says with feeling, dragging their forefinger down the hard set line of Dorian’s jaw. “Do you want to see what we brought you?”
“What Ashton brought you,” Orym corrects gently. “I was indisposed and couldn't help.”
Dorian looks between the two of their reflections in the mirror. “I don’t understand,” he says, voice still formal and stiff.
“It was Orym’s idea. I don’t think I’d have thought of it, to be honest with you.” Ashton opens the black velvet drawstring bag that spent most of the evening tied to their belt, humming tunelessly while examining its contents for a few seconds before making their first selection.
When Ashton holds it up, Orym can see at the same moment as Dorian that it’s a long strand of ivory pearls, each uniformly perfect, smooth sphere the size of a copper piece. Their gleaming iridescence is obvious even in the firelight from the enormous hearth in the center of the bedroom.
He doesn’t linger on the pearls, really. Not so much as he watches Dorian’s mouth fall open at the same time a deep furrow forms in the center of his forehead.
“You shouldn’t have,” he says. And then, as though realizing that he sounds like a cliché, Dorian attempts to look somewhat sternly at both of them. “No, you really shouldn’t have. Those aren’t glass. That must cost–”
“Nothing less than your dignity, apparently,” Ashton declares, draping the first strand around Dorian’s neck with obvious delight. “I figure, if you’re going to offer yourself up on the altar of your own self-worth to delight those noble fucks, the absolute least they owe you is a fucking necklace or two.”
“Orym, you couldn't have–”
Orym shrugs, pulling Dorian away from the mirror, not missing his reluctance to stop looking now. Dorian can’t quite make himself reach for the strand of pearls, his fingers hovering a few inches away from them. Still apparently reassuring himself that he hasn’t been lost along the way, spinning himself up inside his head with what he might have given up over the course of an evening playacting a person he’d left for dead two years ago.
“All I suggested was that we find you what you wanted. I left the particulars to Ashton.”
“You fucking knew.” Ashton’s grin widens when Orym looks up past Dorian and says nothing at all.
Once he’s gotten Dorian to the bed, Orym pushes him to sit, lifts his chin so he’s looking overhead at the enormous, ostentatiously mirrored ceiling. Dorian leans so far back to look at himself that he collapses into the plush mattress and groans with obvious pleasure.
“I haven’t slept on a bed like this since–” Dorian doesn’t finish, looking off to the side distractedly.
“I never have,” Ashton offers, setting the velvet bag on the edge of the bed next to Orym. They keep walking to the water basin in the corner, dipping Dorian’s kerchief into the marble basin that’s enchanted to keep the water clean and steaming hot. Returning with it, Ashton passes the cloth to Orym and starts undoing the buttons at the front of their coat.
“I’m going to wash your face,” Orym says, climbing up onto the bed beside him while keeping his boots off the bedclothes. Even if none of them care about these people here, Orym still doesn’t want to make a mess the servants will have to spend hours cleaning.
He swipes the warm cloth over Dorian’s eyes with gentle pressure, just enough to clean away enough of the heavy lines. Dorian sometimes lines his eyes, but in dark blues and whites, swirls and dots that imitate the flow of the wind and striations of clouds in a spring sky. Orym wishes he’d thought to bring Dorian’s makeup with him, if only to try and make him remember that part of himself.
A tug at Orym’s foot makes him look over his shoulder to see Ashton carefully unlacing his boots, setting them gently to the side where Orym will want them in the morning, or whenever they decide to leave this gilded prison. Their deft hands reach for the flap at the front of Orym’s breeches, apparently appreciating the fine fabric Dorian chose for him in the same way Orym ought to have enjoyed it.
Once his tunic has been lifted away, Orym drops the cloth over the side of the bed and crawls up to pull Dorian’s head into his bare lap. He lifts the strand of pearls with one finger, admiring the contrast against the violet and cerulean shades of Dorian’s firelit skin. Having seen the ensemble Dorian planned to wear once before, it isn’t difficult for Orym to imagine how he ought to have looked tonight.
This is the next best thing to that, though, given the circumstances.
Orym reaches into Ashton’s bag, feeling through a small horde of jewelry far finer than anything he’s ever handled. Shooting them a look over his shoulder, Orym wonders how full the bag was when they talked in the ballroom, how much they thought they needed for this.
“All you said was pearls, I didn’t know what his style was,” Ashton says, dropping onto Dorian’s other side and reaching across into the bag, fingers brushing Orym’s and then drawing out a knot of necklaces.
It’s not just pearl necklaces, though. Orym untangles the jewelry from the bag and hands it off to Ashton, who drapes each necklace around Dorian’s neck with a flourish, until Dorian is flushed and covered with them and the jewels keep coming from the bag. There’s a single, oblong pearl that fits perfectly in Dorian’s navel, a pair of filigree hoops that Orym carefully works through the piercings in Dorian’s nipples and Ashton loops another strand of pearls between them so they drape artfully over his breastbone. There’s already a fortune’s worth of pearls on him, and somehow Ashton keeps pulling out more.
“How much is there?” Orym finally asks, lifting Dorian’s wrist to kiss his soft pulse and clasp the pearl armband he’s holding around it. It almost resembles a vambrace with its long strands of pearls woven and interlocked together so the gems make a rushing noise like the ocean pulling at thousands of shells on the shore whenever Dorian moves.
“I didn’t take enough that they’ll notice,” Ashton answers flippantly, looking pleased when they finally produce a bandeau set with deep, cobalt sapphires and dripping with loops of seed pearls. “Settled a few scores while I was down there, though.”
Ashton probably means that they planted some jewelry on some unsuspecting noble to sow chaos, but Orym doesn’t linger on what further-reaching effects that may have. He chooses instead to think of what he cares most about at the moment, and sits back on his heels to admire Dorian’s nacreous shine.
Dorian reaches the hand with the pearl bracer to touch the tiara, his eyes fixed on his reflection in the mirror above them. He opens his mouth to say something, but for the first time since Orym met this silver-tongued bard, Dorian is apparently completely without words.
“I suppose it’s not exactly what you had in mind,” Orym says in a low voice. “But I hope it’s close enough.”
“This is absurd.” Dorian’s voice wavers a little as Ashton leans forward and steals a kiss from his mouth. He must still be feeling off balance, because he grips Ashton’s forearms like a lifeline, pushing up into their kiss like he’s drowning: completely still above the surface and thrashing for life beneath.
Dorian’s hips jump toward Ashton’s hand, wrapped around the base of his cock with one more strand of perfect, bright white pearls coiled around the shaft.
“It’s good to have you back.” Ashton says, sitting back with a smug grin, but they keep their grip on his cock while Dorian blinks up at Orym.
Taking the invitation extended to him, Orym threads his fingers through long, silken locks of hair and pulls just enough to make Dorian gasp. He tastes of the fine wine they were passing around the ball, which Orym eschewed in favor of his sworn duty. He doesn’t think he missed out on much: the pure vintage could never taste so sweet as it does on Dorian’s mouth.
“Is this okay?” he asks breathlessly, fingers stroking the sensitive parts of his arms and waiting for him to nod. “We want you to feel good tonight.”
“This is a pretty good start,” Dorian laughs for the first time in days, looking back up to stare at his reflection in the ceiling. “I look–”
Ashton squeezes his cock. “Like you should have the whole fucking night?”
“I was going to say I look ridiculous.” Dorian closes his eyes, retreating back inside himself the way he has all night. “I was–”
“Somebody else,” Orym reminds him, lifting Dorian’s head into his lap and stroking his cheekbones, trying to make himself forget about that other person just as much as Dorian is. “You look like Dorian again.”
Without opening his eyes, Dorian says, “I was everything I'm supposed to be. Everything I really am. I gave them what they wanted.”
“You did.” Orym bends forward to kiss him upside down, forming the words against his lips: “But that's not who you are.”
Dorian can never know how much he frightened the two of them, how close Orym thinks they came to losing him.
As if reading his thoughts through his expression, Ashton nudges their elbow into Orym’s knee. “Keep it light, you broody fuck.”
Dorian hiccups a laugh into Orym’s mouth, rolling up into Ashton’s grip again. “I’ll ask Eshteross if I can get that other outfit back.”
“You’d better.” Ashton pulls the strand of pearls up the length of Dorian’s cock, dragging a thumb through the glistening bead of precome at the tip before rolling their fist back down. “Or else I’ll die mad I never saw you in it.”
Orym privately promises himself he’ll manufacture a reason for it to happen. He’s at least half to blame for Ashton’s disappointment now: Orym hasn’t been able to make himself shut up about the one time he saw Dorian wearing that sheer number for the better part of the past week.
This isn’t bad, though, either, although that crease in Dorian’s forehead is still there. Orym wants to see the end of that stern persona as his face is suffused with pleasure, for Dorian to see himself laughing and whimsical and glittering with jewels.
“Just imagine if they could see you now,” Orym says quietly, just loud enough that Ashton snorts with laughter. “If they saw you the way we do.”
“Debauched, ruined, disgraceful?” Dorian turns his head so he can’t see himself again, but Ashton catches his chin with his other hand and turns it back toward the mirrors.
They offer: “Filthy, hot and liberated?”
“Definitely hot. Beautiful, too,” Orym adds. “Look, Dorian. Look at yourself.”
And he finally does, eyes flying open as Ashton drops their mouth over the head of his cock and slides all the way down until their lips brush against the pearls dangling loosely around the base. Whatever it is Dorian sees in the mirror has his attention, but even though he’d like to watch as Ashton enthusiastically sucks him off, Orym keeps his focus on Dorian.
Sliding his fingers down Dorian’s jaw and neck, floating over his pearl-encrusted collarbones, Orym traces swirling patterns not unlike that of his tattoo along Dorian’s ribs. Dorian’s breathing comes shorter as he works himself up, sounding on the edge of panicked and desperate, like he’s caught between the two halves of himself he won’t allow himself to reconcile. He’s never taken this long to come, certainly not with Ashton’s throat working to accommodate his cockhead as it brushes against the back of their throat.
“Come on,” Orym urges, rubbing his nose against Dorian’s neck until he finds the warm spot where his heart thuds like a battle drum and bites down hard enough to mark. Certainly hard enough to yank Dorian back from the void he’s staring down, because his surprised yelp turns to a moan at whatever Ashton’s doing with their mouth.
The next time their head draws back to the end of his cock, Ashton lingers on the place where his foreskin is tethered just under the head, the one where Dorian’s most sensitive. “Come on, Dorian,” they say in a low command that makes even Orym’s back straighten.
As though all he needed was both their permission to let go, Dorian’s back arches from the bed. He grabs Orym by the ears and pulls him into another kiss, but it’s not enough to muffle the long, sustained cry that’s dragged from deep in his chest.
“Look,” Ashton says while Orym soothes Dorian through the aftershocks of pleasure. They fall back onto their heels and slide their palms along Dorian’s thighs. “Now we match.”
Orym urges Dorian’s head up and follows the line of Dorian’s gaze down his body to his softening, twitching cock and then beyond to Ashton’s chest, the broad field of green and gold splattered with white droplets of come that aren’t at all dissimilar to the pearls Dorian is wearing.
It’s apparently as overwhelming a sight for Dorian as it is for him, because while Orym swallows his groan, Dorian whimpers quietly as he looks over Ashton. “I want that,” he says in a voice hoarse with the abuse of speaking in a manner he’s no longer accustomed to. “I want you both to – to–”
Orym pets his face gently, tracing his blushes down his neck to the pearls at his throat, twisting one strand playfully around his forefinger. “You want us to do what? You’ll need to be specific.”
Dorian looks up at him, wild-eyed and desperate, and his cock twitching in interest, despite having already just come. He won’t be able to come again this soon, but it’s gratifying to know Dorian is still so interested in the idea.
“I want you to come on me like that. I want–”
“Another strand of pearls?” Orym asks, his voice bleeding amusement. Even glowing indigo, Dorian’s asking and he’s looking Orym in the eye when he does. That’s not nothing.
“Two, it sounds like.” Ashton flashes teeth through their grin, grabbing Orym's hand and dragging it through Dorian’s come on their chest until they’ve painted themself with a filthy approximation of Dorian’s adornments. “How do I look?”
“Beautiful,” Dorian says simply, folding his hand around Orym’s as Ashton’s neck burns. His voice is a plea when he asks, "Both of you at once?"
Orym thinks Ashton’s of the same mind, that neither of them would deny him anything he wants in this moment. Still, figuring out how to give Dorian what he's asking for is more complicated than it first seems. Orym scrambles out from beneath Dorian's head, but before he has a chance to ask how he wants this, Ashton grabs his chin and pulls him forward into a kiss over Dorian.
"Haven't gotten to do that all night," they mumble just loud enough for Orym to hear, then give him a rough shove back to where he's kneeling behind Dorian's head.
Dorian looks between their two faces, then back at his reflection, seeming to realize it’s the best view he’s going to have of this as it happens. “Do you two know how–”
“Lucky we are?” Orym interjects, wrapping his come-slick hand around his cock and pushing up into his fist with a sharp hiss. Ashton straddles Dorian’s chest on the other side and they’re face to face with Dorian between them.
“I think we do. Yeah?” Ashton sweeps their gaze down from Orym’s face to his cock jutting out, and then down to Dorian’s face. They swipe a palm through Dorian’s come and mirror Orym’s grip on their own cock, firm and decisive. Whatever they see on Orym’s face makes them smile, a half-crooked lift of their mouth that feels more sincere when they add, a little softer: “Yeah.”
Orym follows their lead, pushing up into his fist and dropping his head back with a muffled groan. Then he does it again, pushing back his foreskin and feeling the hot-slick friction of his own palm over the head, and it’s different than it usually is, or maybe it’s just the pent up tension he’s been carrying all night sitting like a geyser in the base of his spine.
Under absolutely any other circumstance, Orym might be more interested in making a display of himself, showcasing the ways he likes to be touched. Dorian already knows them all and Ashton’s a fast learner, though, and Orym’s had enough of putting on performances for the evening. Dorian’s hair is fanned out around his head like a crown, the slivers of blue skin peeking out from beneath all his pearls more beautiful than all the ostentatious jewels of Jrusar combined.
For half an instant, Dorian looks from his reflection directly up at him, his eyes fever bright with gratitude and relief, his mouth forming the command and that’s all Orym needs.
Orym chokes on the breath that freezes in his chest, watching open-mouthed as the first streak of white lands among the pearls, brighter in the light than any of them. He wants to keep his eyes open long enough to see how his come looks against Dorian’s sky-blue chest, wants to do this as often as Dorian wants it, wants Dorian to know how beautiful and wanted he is like this, as himself.
And then he hears Ashton’s strangled groan and it just keeps going, even though Orym isn’t anymore.
There’s a beat of quiet before Orym drops back onto his heels and folds forward over Dorian’s head, covering his face with featherlight kisses, whispering affectionate nonsense, and Dorian, Dorian, Dorian. Ashton’s weight falls into the expensive, soft mattress and Dorian’s reaching for them with both hands.
Orym doesn’t recede far, stroking his fingers through Dorian’s hair and waiting for the deep trembling in Dorian’s chest to subside.
“How’s our boy?” he asks warmly after it has, when Ashton’s drawn back for breath and Orym’s stroking a thumb along the gold scars of their shoulder.
Dorian looks between the two of them with unbearable fondness and drags them both down on either side of him. Look at us, he seems to say, turning Orym’s face up to the ceiling, pulling Ashton closer before they can draw back. Look how lucky we are.
But all he says aloud is, “Never better.”