Dorian Montoir
December 25, 2019 3:51 PM
Happiness (tag Vlad) by Dorian Montoir
Dorian sat in his and Vlad's room. Telling Tatya had gone... perfectly. By his own logic, he had thought there was a chance she would understand but he hadn't really known if that was pure fantasy or not. But she did. And he wanted to smile and cry every time he thought about that. He had known for a while that he was carrying a weight in his heart but he hadn't realised quite how heavy it was or what it was doing to him until he let some of it go. He was struggling to pinpoint when he'd last felt anything close to this happy.That gave him an idea... He did not regret his decision to give up the second Professor Brooding-Hawthorne's class but there was one spell he'd always been curious to try from the advanced material. A patronus was a manifestation of your essential self, created from your own happiness. He had no doubt what form his would take but he'd always thought it would be nice to meet it. He drew his wand, not focussing on a memory so much as the current warm feeling effusing his chest.
"Expecto patronum," he cast, starting in surprise as a stream of silver mist unfolded from his wand. It was formless, but from what he'd read about patronuses, it was pretty challenging get a corporeal one.
He rummaged under his covers, retrieving the little felt bowtruckle that Jean-Loup had won him at the fair. He had been keeping it somewhat hidden. Not because he didn't want to have to answer questions about it but... Well, just not immediately. He hadn't wanted to have to lie or be evasive but he had wanted to tell Tatya first. They were closer than he was with Vlad, or at least they confided more private thoughts in each other. Vlad and Dorian lived together, which gave them other kinds of closeness. Vlad saw the bad bits. He saw Dorian when he was too tired and frustrated to put up the effort any more. He had seen him when he was sick, none of which was pretty. Vlad was just... always there. He was a steady, comforting presence, and Dorian appreciated him. They were close in the way that two people whose living quarters were heaped on top of each other had to be, but they had never gone particularly deep about anything. Not that this had to be deep. It didn't have to be a whole big philosophical discussion on the nature of love or its morals. It was just... something that was true. Something that was going on with Dorian right now that his friends should know, because friends told each other things.
Right now though, he was more focussed on the bowtruckle. He tried to pull together all the best pieces of the person who had given it to him. His smile. How soft his hair felt under Dorian's fingertips. The fact he thought Dorian was pretty and special and deserved to be loved. And he added to that the fact that Tatya thought so too. That she was happy for him, and on his side. He closed his eyes, pushing out the stress and fear and doubt. In addition to Tatya, he had, and would always have, Professor Brooding, and whilst it was not true that there was nothing to be scared of, it was easier to tell himself that he could face the fear, if needed. For now though, it was far away, and he just focused on the love he had in his life.
"Expecto Patronum," he cast, his voice firm and steady. He opened his eyes, and saw again the swirl of silver mist, still more or less formless, although he could see a faint outline of some strong back legs and a little cotton tail. And, in the doorway, his roommate.
"Hi," he smiled, almost embarrassed and sheepish for a second at being caught at doing something different. But he checked himself - what was wrong with feeling happy? And, after all, Vlad had seen far worse from him. His smile returned, and from his pillow the little plushie bowtruckle waved, "How are you?"
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Dorian Montoir
Happiness (tag Vlad)
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Vladimir Brockert
December 26, 2019 4:38 PM
Happiness is coming home again. by Vladimir Brockert
A silver something greeted Vladimir as he entered the chamber he shared with his dear friend Dorian. He had just been posed to take a full step into the room, but the glimmering wisp gave him pause of curiosity. It wasn’t quite an animal, but there was something almost animal-like about it. A ghost-animal? Vlad obviously knew that wasn’t how this worked, but with the blurring figure, he had no better speculation.It was only then that he processed that he had heard speech, or, more accurately, an incantation: “Expecto patronum”. Was that then… a Patronus? It wasn’t quite corporeal, but it was darn close.
“Oh my gosh, Dorian!” Vlad exclaimed, completely ignoring the question posed to him. How was he? Who cared right now! “That was really good!” He shuffled into the room, haphazardly abandoning his messenger bag in the doorway. His shoes fell off not far from there, and that was where they remained. Vladimir hopped up eagerly onto Dorian’s bed. “Keep doing that! It’s really cool!” he beamed.
It was then that the sixteen year old looked down and noticed the little bowtruckle on the pillow. “Hey, I like that,” he said, pointing at it. “Where’d you get it?”
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Vladimir Brockert
Happiness is coming home again.
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Dorian Montoir
December 28, 2019 5:56 AM
Happiness is always having one to go to by Dorian Montoir
"Thanks," Dorian smiled, as Vlad complimented his spellwork. He was not quite sure how he was going to manage with the request to keep doing it - the spell definitely required a specific state of mind and a lot of concentration, both of which were harder to achieve with someone bouncing on the end of your bed. Not that he was any less happy now, he supposed, he just... Well, there was a reason he'd been backstage during Teppenpaw's concert performance. He had always done considerably worse in classes where he felt observed or scruitinised.Luckily, as was the creature's nature, his protective little botruckle came to his rescue, easily diverting Vlad's attention.
"This is Bo," Dorian smiled, scooping him up, hoping that holding him would make him feel braver. In some ways, it felt like it should be impossible to be scared - Vlad was quite possibly the least intimidating person anyone could imagine. However, Dorian was an absolute expert in worrying about things, so ot sort of balanced out. Whilst he couldn't imagine Vlad shouting or name calling or being unkind, he found it harder to imagine what his reaction might be at all, and the unknown was always a little intimidating. "Or Beau," he said with a slight smile, as he knew those two sounded identical, "It can be the same word with a Chinese spelling or a French one," he clarified, "If it's the French one, it means 'good looking,' if Chinese it means 'wave' - the other kind, like you get on the ocean," he added, beacuse on hearing that word, Bo had wiggled his little green fingers again. The fair-ground's enchantments had worn off pretty quickly but Jean-Loup had tried to mimic them as best he could. Bo waved at obvious cues like 'hello' or, it seemed, the word itself. He could also hug, although he was rather on the small side for it. He could not hug or be hugged very much, but Dorian had taken to sitting him in his hands, as he was doing now, and when asked for a hug, Bow would wrap his little green arms around Dorian's fingers. Dorian stroked his head affectionately. "I tend to think of the Chinese name because then it's not like Beau Tate," he added, even though he preferred to think of the person who had given the gift as definitely a beau. His beau, in fact. Which brought them back to the question that Vlad had actually asked and which he had so far failed to answer.
There were ways to answer that, of course, without actually telling him... Bo came from a funfair. He was a prize in a game. Someone won him for me. That last one skated quite close, seeing as Dorian thought the gesture seemed inherently romantic. And he didn't want to skirt around it. He just... he wasn't sure whether to just blurt it out. With Tatya he'd warned her he needed to tell her something. With Professor Brooding, she had already known about him liking boys. He felt like he was now in the middle of a story, and couldn't now give the relevant context and back story but was about to drop something in that needed them in order to make sense... It didn't seem very fair to Vlad to just sort of blindside him with this. Except Dorian wasn't really sure how else to do it. Or how, in general, he was supposed to keep doing this. Did he need to have A Serious Conversation with everyone in his life? People talked about their lives and who they were dating, and could he just... do that too? The subtext to 'I have a boyfriend' was not hard to figure out, so could he just, at some point, leave it at that?
"He came from the funfair," he began, holding Bo tight against his chest. "I was with... Well... at the time, actually not... But then later... Someone won him for me, and then after that we started dating," he managed, realising he had accidentally managed to structure that sentence in such a way that he still hadn't said The Thing. And he didn't want Vlad to start saying the wrong thing and have to correct him- "He," he added hastily. "The... person that I'm dating. Is a guy."
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Dorian Montoir
Happiness is always having one to go to
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Vladimir Brockert
December 30, 2019 7:33 AM
I like the way that sounds by Vladimir Brockert
Vlad’s absolute favorite thing about his Sonora experience thus far had to be the opportunity for multiculturalism. Even now, something as simple as an introduction to a new botruckle friend - and of course at this Vlad offered a nice little wave to his new acquaintance - offered a chance to learn something new. Dorian explained how Bo’s name could mean different things in Chinese and in French. Dorian had near constant knowledge for Vlad. And between that and the extra Russian he had picked up from Tatya, he felt like his friends made him an all around better and more intelligent person. And that’s what friends were for, right?“Ooooh!” He grinned instinctively as Dorian’s tale began. But then his friend added some extra information about the person he hung out with at a funfair - the person Dorian was dating. It took a moment of processing for Vlad to conclude that he had actually heard Dorian right. Then he just blinked, confused by this.
“A guy?” He reiterated. “You’re dating a guy?” This was quite surprising to Vladimir - he didn’t know that was an option. He had only ever seen boys date girls and girls date boys. He supposed there was no part of dating that explicitly had to be that way - it wasn’t like guys’ mouths only fit against girls’ because mouths were pretty much all the same - but maybe it was just less common.
“I didn’t know you could do that,” he confessed earnestly after a moment. Vlad didn’t know there was to be any sort of judgment with it, so there was none: only genuine naivety. It had just never come up before. “So… you’re both the boyfriend, then?” Followed by: “What’s he like?”
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Vladimir Brockert
I like the way that sounds
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Dorian Montoir
January 01, 2020 7:06 AM
Me too by Dorian Montoir
There was a slightly horrible moment where Vlad was just... repeating back what Dorian had said but as questions, and even though his tone wasn't aggressive it made Dorian's palms sweat. But then... Vlad just seemed confused, a little like Tatya had been. Not mad. Not disgusted. Just... unaware."Nor did I," Dorian admitted, with a slight wry smile as Vlad confessed his ignorance of this being a thing. "Until I started having feelings for other guys. So.. that was kind of confusing. And scary,” he admitted. It felt utterly surreal to sit here talking about his feelings on this like… like it was just any other subject in the world. Like it was… normal.
“Yeah. We are,” he stated with a smile, when Vlad said they were both the boyfriend. Dorian was still not well-versed enough in all things queer ideology to understand why this was comforting, at least not in the terms of heteronormative relationship roles. But he understood that anyone looking at him and Jean-Loup could quite quickly and easily divide them up - the strong, athletic jock, who no one would suspect was not the quintessential boy next door, and him - the sore thumb, who’d always liked playing tea party and not been like the other boys. But being ‘too girly’ had always been one of the things Matthieu got at him for, and he didn’t want to be cast in that role in his relationship. And already, hadn’t those lines already blurred a little? He thought about his boyfriend opening up and being vulnerable, letting himself cry and confess that things had been horrible and frightening. Jean-Loup was big enough and tough enough to fight the monsters underneath Dorian’s bed, but Dorian seemed to have just as much being strong and taking care of Jean-Loup’s problems to do. They both got to be brave. They both got to be scared. They both got to be the boyfriend. And it was so validating to just… hear it put out there. No what-does-that-mean, how-does-that-work. Just… acceptance.
And then Vlad asked the other question. The best question. The one that made Dorian’s smile return full force as he was invited to talk and, for once, was more than willing to hold the floor.
“Wonderful,” he positively beamed at the question of what Jean-Loup was like. “He’s…” he hesitated, lost between too many adjectives and also knowing that a simple stream of words would in no way do his subject justice. “He’s kind. He wants to be a Healer when he grows up. He’d be good at it too. He likes looking after people. He plays Quidditch - I know, that hardly seems like it’d be my type,” he laughed, “but it’s for the sweetest reason; he plays Beater so he can protect his little sister who plays Seeker. He tries to make sure as few people as possible come out of the game hurt. On which note, he is tall and muscular and gorgeous - sorry,” he cut himself off, wondering if Vlad really wanted to hear how physically attractive Dorian found another guy. Or any more about this. He was possibly rambling. “Too much? I can shut up…” he offered, trying to look sorry and like he meant that except his mouth kept twitching into little smiles and he was still visibly shining with the same energy he’d had when Vlad had first come in and found him casting the patronus.
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Dorian Montoir
Me too
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Vladimir Brockert
January 04, 2020 6:12 PM
I'm so glad by Vladimir Brockert
“Wonderful.”Dorian was in love. That was plain to see. And it really was wonderful. The Teppenpaw boys didn’t often discuss feelings - not that either of them was too particularly manly or anything, but it just never really happened - but it seemed like something had previously been bothering Dorian for a while. Vlad hadn’t felt like he should pry, but he had definitely noticed. Maybe this was what it was. Not necessarily having a boyfriend (this was obviously a pretty recent occurrence) but the whole thing. The overarching theme. The boy theme.
A boyfriend. Dorian liked boys. That raised a lot of questions, opened a lot of doors that Vladimir had never even known were closed. Boys dating boys. That was a thing. How or why or what happened from there, he didn’t know. But also, his manners reminded him that nothing about Dorian and his boyfriend was Vlad’s business, other than “did this guy make Dorian happy?” And since he did, Vlad didn’t need to meddle. He didn’t need to know any more.
But he was glad to hear more. He liked the way Dorian went on and on about him. It made him sad when his friend cut himself off. Maybe he was worried because he was dropping words like “gorgeous” that the younger boy would be uncomfortable. But he wasn’t. “Absolutely not,” he said firmly. “Please, go on.” Vlad meant it, too, partially because he wanted to know, and partially because he thought that maybe nobody had ever asked before.
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Vladimir Brockert
I'm so glad
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