Location: Dorian's car-> Walking on Air. | Tag: @MaryGold 's Dorian, @wren. 's Lionel.
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Nostalgia haunted Julian City's streets like wandering ghosts. Here - the wayward spirit of Leland as a child ran toward a park ahead of his keepers. There - a teenaged Leland stood proud in the reflection of a shop window while his parents poured praises over him to their company. As the car rolled onward, and Dorian's phone call continued, Leland's glance followed memory's poltergeists where Lionel had caught Leland before he'd absently ambled into the street.
Present-day Leland shook his head while a fond slant pulled at his mouth. He remembered he'd been excited - his head filled with visions of the future and what he might become, but his eyes had gone blind to the moment. Good thing Lionel's hadn't, keeping a younger Leland from bobbing off into traffic.
Leland eavesdropped for a brief moment to Dorian's side of his phone call, finding a brusque staccato around his replies. The fond slant of his mouth became a crooked grin, though ambiguous sympathy gave shape to his blue eyes while they purposefully trailed away from his brother's direction. In his mind, that'd give his call a little more sense of privacy, even if he'd possibly been forgotten there in the vehicle in favor of the call.
He'd always admired his brother, more so when they were both adults and had anything of substance to connect over. A child-Leland hadn't fully comprehended the unequal treatment he and Dorian had received growing up. A child-Leland also hadn't grasped why Dorian didn't have much time for him – though he imagined in ambiguous ways that there were big, important things for his big, important brother to attend to. In ways, that part wasn't wrong.
As an adult, Leland had better processed the fight Dorian had been made to make to claw anything for himself from the world. He also better realized how he himself had been treated as a golden child – given every opportunity. If anyone could have been a better brother, Leland had felt it'd have been himself, though back then he'd only been a child, so he couldn't fully hold himself accountable. With clearer eyes as an adult, though, Leland celebrated Dorian's strength and perseverance with more genuine weight. He wasn't just Dorian's fan because the vampir was his older brother anymore; Leland cheered for Dorian for everything he accomplished with his own two hands and scalpel-keen wits.
That day? The cheery Leland sat covered head to toe in metallic-gold body paint while dressed in a toga, winged sandals, and an arc of plastic sun rays bursting from his honey-blond hair. Where was this horror of deified sun located? Cozily nestled in Dorian's car, grinning at a cherished past and toward a hopeful future. A touch of idiocy brightened his expression thanks to Dorian's impatient phone call, too. There had to be a joke with a cringey punchline somewhere about their present moment.
Leland's posture had unconsciously slouched a little during the drive – which perked upward when Dorian addressed him.
"If I told you the amount of makeup sealer and hairspray that's layered over the paint, you'd cry," Leland hummed.
"I got in at an odd hour, I felt the hotel would be more convenient for everyone. And, I oddly felt better about a paid stranger helping me with all of this at the hotel than someone at home."
All of this being the excessive gold and sealant that made him shine in bright, sunny horror. If he were genuinely exposed to this much sunlight, Leland would probably keel over dead.
"I'll stop by when I'm myself again." He added.
The car slowed, reaching a destination Barnabas and Dorian had agreed to, though Leland hadn't closely followed (nor had they named anything specific to begin with). The younger Stoll casually considered the store front, then whipped a surprised double-take while his grin added to his summery presence.
"You're kidding right? 'You can come if you want though' he says, as if I wouldn't want to??" Leland mimicked his brother. He genuinely thought Dorian was knowingly joking with him. After all, with his glance into the shop, he'd unmistakably seen Lionel.
Dorian was already out of the vehicle and right into the store. Leland had lagged behind. Despite all of the sealant over his body paint, he was still mindful not to slide around too much in the car. He lifted and scooted, lifted and scooted, then carefully eased his way out, trying not to touch anything more than he had to with any part of himself.
Out into the street stepped the aestival horror of a sun god. Which sun god? He didn't really know. He just thought something bright gold in a toga would say 'sun god.' It'd be monstrous and aesthetic enough for a party!
He brightened Dorian's wake in gold and cheer, ambling into
Walking on Air some moments behind his brother.
"Lionel, it's been ages!" Leland hummed in eager delight, flicking his praising glance about the well-appointed shoe store.
It seemed he'd waltzed in on the tail end of a reunion between Lionel and Dorian. If Leland remembered anything about those two from his childhood, it was that Dorian always became a
much more attentive brother in front of Lionel.
With maturity and retrospect on his side, Leland's eyes half-lidded with charmed conspiracy over all of that now. He hung back a moment – he could have had entertained popcorn in hand at the sight of his brother tensing there ahead of him.
Ultimately, he thought perhaps he'd spare Dorian's tensed suffering (or add to it in a new way, he was yet, lovingly, undecided). So after his short pause, he ambled on up beside Dorian and looped a golden arm across his brother's shoulders while facing Lionel with a shark-toothed smile. Fortune was on Dorian's side, because the sealant succeeded in keeping any gold from smudging to his clothes.
"Lionel! The shop's gorgeous! Yours? Dorian's in desperate need – and we're going to a party! Wait, you should come with us! Please come with us? You're closing, you're free, right? How do you like my costume? Better yet, how do you like Dorian's?"
Then 'sun' grinned a blazing mischief while he slipped his arm away and gave a small nudge to Dorian's back to urge him forward.
