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who: Alex Reagan and hopefully you!
what: An open log. There's a couple open prompts but if they don't work just add your own! And don't worry about styles. I'll match em.
when: The month of August.
where: Anywhere you want her to be that's not the mingle, honestly!
warnings: Not that I can think of at the moment.

I.

Despite everything else in her life, Alex Reagan happened to be someone who was a person of habit, and so where she could be found just happened to be habit as well. So, all too often Alex found herself working at The Coffee Shop rather than her office with the substandard coffee and the annoying interns. She was there almost every day with at least one empty cup in front of her, one full one and some sort of pastries there for anyone who might happen to want to stop by and visit, or for anyone whom she had a lunch date with. The table itself was largely taken up with two books and a notebook, along with her phone from home. She inevitably had one of the books open, even though both of them were on the same lines of things, even if vastly different.

Alex would either be reading from a book on learning Spanish and copying what she was learning into the notebook in small and frantic writing, as if her hand couldn't keep up with her brain, because well... That's basically what happened, even in things like this. Still, she was making a real effort to do it, and the book was deeply into, as Alex was hitting the harder parts of the beginner's section and there were lists of words that went along with it.

The second book is much older and still somehow less well-loved than the first one, and Alex had found it in the back of the library shelves. Despite having taken it out days ago, she was still dealing with the beginning pages of it, and if there was something that was guaranteed that would make her grumble, it was this. But still, she was determined to try and teach herself how to read Cruciform even if it killed her, which at this point it honestly just might do. So when someone came up to her, she was all too ready to sit either of them aside, and greeting the other person with a grin, especially if it was someone who she expected.

ii

The other way in which Alex was a creature of habit came with her walking her dog in the afternoon. Alex's pitbull was large and gray and more than a little friendly, which probably made sense considering Alex Reagan was his owner. Her mornings were normally running and rowing, but afternoon walks were more slow and leisurely and normally made by herself. Well, by herself as well as her playing Pokemon Go, even if no one else was. So, yes, she's walking her dog but she's also got her device out to let her know when there just happens to be a pokemon or two in the area that she's walking in.

Normally she collects one or two, and fights at a gym or so, and then goes about her business and comes home. Not today though. Today, Alex just stopped so suddenly that Apo's leash actually snapped taunt for a moment before the gray dog came back to see her, and Alex is just staring at her phone for a second. The dumbed silence only lasts for a second or two before Alex just yells like the child who she can come times be: "Oh my god! It's a Pikachu! It's a Pikachu!" Then without a preamble other than that, Alex just takes off after it, a giant grin on her face. She's never caught one before.

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"It happens to be a personal favorite of mine." For when he wanted to forget feelings for a while and just float in a slightly drunken haze, which it had been a month(s) for it. What was bothering wasn't anything so easy to pin down regardless. It was more of a situation regarding a lot of little things piling up, which, well, wasn't it always?

"Nothing at all is going to change anything, what's the point in talking it out?" But at least she did get him to admit something's wrong.

"I didn't say there was anything wrong with it, I said it reminded me of all the bad decisions I made in Greece," Alex responded with a grin and then she took a sip of it with a little wince. "But then again, it's me and I don't need either a fancy vacation or a lot of alcohol in me to make bad decisions." Which was an understatement, as anyone who knew her just happened to know about her. So, she felt like she could make bad jokes about it. At least here anyway, when things were so much less high stakes. At least in general.

That said, her eyes were on his again, and she just watched him before she couldn't help but ask: "even if it's not going to change anything, what's wrong with talking it out? How do you know unless you try it, Dorian?"

Instead of immediately speaking, he takes a long draw from his glass. He doesn't know how to discuss feelings, not really. Back home, it simply wasn't done. Oh, it wasn't stated, either. No. One just learned, through trial and error and disapproving glares to keep ones affairs, well, their affairs. At length, though, he set the glass down gently, but didn't look over to her before he spoke.

"Fine. Are you familiar with a man named Magnus? Large, brute of a man, has a love of carpentry and a strange fixation with dogs?"

No one was surprised more than Alex when that actually worked. Yes, she was annoyingly persistent according to her partner (who honestly would know better than anyone else) but Alex normally needed to work more than this. However, she wasn't going to look a gift horse (or drink) in the mouth when he started to talk. Even if he didn't look at her, Alex watched him intently, her hand resting in her chin as she listened.

"If it's the same Magnus I'm thinking on, I think I saw his post on the network? He talked about what animal you were?" Which was honestly the sort of shitpost Alex would have put up, and she was sad that she'd missed commenting on it.

He's not quite sure how he feels about that being Magnus' most defining moment in recent memory, but it is what it is and there's little be done about it. It was endearing after all, his almost innocent love of animals. He couldn't fault the man for it, and the way his face lit up when speaking of them...

...but this was hardly the time to think on that too much. "Yes, that is the Magnus I speak of...in a way. He'd been here previously, you know, and left, returning a month later, but no memory of his previous stay."

Things that started with talking about a person 'in a way' were never good in Alex's experience, and she frowned at him almost preemptively before he said what he did. For a moment, Alex just blinked and then it hit her: the reason why it was probably so bad that he didn't remember was because well... Dorian and he were a thing or had a thing or there was some other unspecified emotion there.

"Oh Dorian..." Alex said softly, and she touched his hand with one of her own, and with the other, refilled his glass. She knew which gesture that her friend would rather have, honestly, so she was going to accommodate both at once.

Maker save him, but he's terrible at explaining himself. He wanted to tell her about how he felt responsible for even speaking to Magnus when he returned because the other man felt responsible for everything. He wanted to mention that it was fine, that he was used to being selected last, if at all, but he didn't know how to put them into words. A man who could ramble for hours about magical theory was at a loss when it came to his own emotions.

He was far more appreciative of the refilled glass than the touch. Maker, he was just as terrible as accepting comfort as he was at offering it. As thankful as he was about the refill of his glass, he didn't immediately drink from it, instead just looking at it for a moment, rather than looking to Alex.

"Have I told you much about my homeland?" It seemed disjointed, but he had a point. He would at least try to explain himself.

"Not a lot, actually," Alex said softly, and she lifted her drink and took another sip of it, watching him. The hand she's using was the one on his own, but she's got the bottle handy just in case he needed more to get this part of the story out. "Mostly just that there's magic, but not the sort of magic that allows you to be two places at once." Later, when things aren't so upsetting for him, Alex will offer to introduce him to Simon so that Dorian can meet the bilocator, but that's for later, and this is for now.

So, Alex is just going to go quiet and wait for him to go on, now that she's answered his question. If nothing else, she's good with that when there's someone trying to figure out how to say something.

He chuckled. He knew more than a few people who would be shocked he'd spoken so little of his homeland to a stranger, so obsessed did they find him to be, and self-centered. The truth of the matter was, of course, that Dorian actually cared a great deal...about everything and everyone. It made things rather difficult at times.

"My homeland if far to the north of Thedas, my world, and is the Tevinter Imperium. I do love our fancy names for things, our damnedable classes, and believing we know better than everyone about a great many things." He took a healthy drink from his glass and then put a hand to his chest. "I am an Altus mage, upper class, the highest, really. Every other Altus family is trying to inter-marry in order to distill the perfect leader, and the perfect mage. My parents were one such couple, and if I may say so, they have borne a remarkably handsome and brilliant son." And at that, his somewhat haughty smile wavered. "Though...still imperfect. You see, aside from attaining my father's dream and becoming Archon, our leader, one day, it's expected I would further the Pavus legacy, which I have absolutely no interest in." He scoffed, shaking his head. "Spending my entire life tied to some squawking hen who loathes me as much as I loathe her, pretending to be something I'm not." He shook his head. "If you haven't gleaned an understanding just yet, I prefer the company of men and my father never approved. Such things in the Imperium are imperfections and must be hidden." He finished off his glass before he continued, looking at its empty well rather than Alex.

"I learned at a rather young age to never dream of something more, and yet here I was gifting a unique opportunity...or so I thought." He scoffed again, shaking his head and finally looking back to Alex, a rueful expression tugging his features. "You must think me painfully dramatic."

Alex is good about listening, and not interrupting, but she can't keep the smile from her face when he mentions that he was remarkably handsome and brilliant. Alex actually agrees, but she doesn't need to say it; it's all there on her face. That's the good thing about being so expressive sometimes. Then she frowned quickly, because Alex has a pretty decent gaydar, and she knows that as soon as someone mentions genes and married and children, it's never going to amount to a good thing in a homophobic society.

There's no small desire to shake his father in this point, because how the hell do you do that to your brilliant son like that? She doesn't know, and honestly, she doesn't want to know because there's really not a single excuse for it that could be good enough for that. She wants to reach out and put her hand on his again, but she knows Dorian, so instead she just refills his drink and tops her own off as well.

"I don't think you're being dramatic at all, Dorian! I mean, your family wanted you to deny a piece of you and then you got here and you thought that you were going to be able to have something that makes you happy, and then now you're experiencing a loss. It's bad enough to have the loss of a relationship, but to have the loss of a relationship and have the person not know you or about it? That sounds terrible."

Understanding. Even after three years with Iona, his dearest and...only true friend, really, it was something he never expected and rarely prepared for. He realized he could be over the top sometimes, but it would never occur to him his theatrics were due to a need to be noticed, coveted, due to a lack of it in his youth. Psychological studies were a few hundreds years in the future of Thedas, if it survived that long, after all.

"His friend told him, and...Magnus is a man who cares, deeply, about everything." It was one of the things Dorian adored about him, after all. It was very...Tevene. They loved, hated, despaired with everything they were. It was a matter of cultural pride, and he'd found that level of passion in a man from another world, a man who called him in the middle of the night to ask how he was, who smiled when he walked into a room, and then he remembered nothing. Until Taako had told him. "He found me, and apologized." He shook his head. "As though his forgetting were somehow his fault, and now...I sometimes wonder if he wishes to see me simply out of guilt or some...misguided sense of responsibility. That would suit him."

It probably helped that Alex knew that she could be dramatic herself, honestly, but that was neither here nor there. It was in her nature to give a damn and to validate, so that was what she did whenever and wherever she could, like now. After all, Dorian had been there at what she considered her lowest point here in Riverview, (Well, it had been her lowest point in Riverview until recently, but Alex was doggedly not thinking of that.) so, she was just... returning the favor.

Magnus, did sound like a good man, the sort of man that Dorian deserved, even though she knew not to tell him that. At least not right now, at least not with this pain and this loss so fresh. Instead, she just listened and kept her hand on his arm almost like she was intending to use it as some sort of life preserver. She thought that she could almost feel his loss through it when he said that Magnus apologized. "Oh Dorian." Her voice was soft and it was empathetic as she tried to consider what to say in response to all of this.

"I think," she began after a second. "That you're forgetting something, Dorian. You're still you. And you're wonderful. That doesn't change just because he doesn't remember it. You still have the same personality, the same everything. Is it so unconscionable that he could see as you and feel those feelings again in a similar way? I know it wouldn't be the same because of experiences changing and all of that... but yeah, similarly."

He could, yes. She wasn't wrong and Dorian knew that to be true more than anything else. If they spent time with one another, it was possible, perhaps, but he found it unlikely. It wasn't fair of him to offer what he had without fully explaining, though some of it he was just beginning to understand, himself. He didn't say anything for a moment as he pondered precisely how to explain, sipping at his refilled glass and looking down at his hands.

"He chose to leave. He was given a chance and he took it." He took a breath, and continued. "Back home, time passed, and he remembered a life he'd previously forgotten, and father-in-law with whom he'd founded a business, and the woman he'd lost to war." He looked up then, and his eyes were sad. "How could I compete with that?"

People giving the choice to go home was almost something that Alex felt like was a fantasy. Yes she knew people who had and she knew people who had come back and she knew people that had lost those they cared for, like Dorian. It was part and parcel for living on the moon, but it still felt fair away until someone she cared for lost someone they cared for.

“I don’t think that you have to compete Dorian, you're not them. Your not his business or the woman that he lost. But those things aren't here. They're in the past, especially if she died in a war, right? I think it may take time of course, but just because someone chooses to leave, it doesn't mean he doesn't care. And even if he's just trying to? Dorian, I think that means something. If he honestly didn't give a damn about you, he wouldn't try. He'd just shut you out and keep going with his life."

"That's just it." He set his glass down, as though to further illustrate, perhaps a bit too hard, but not with enough force as to attract the attention of other tables. "He does care. Deeply. About everything."

It was, if he were honest, one of the things he'd first began admiring about Magnus, and eventually, one of the things that attracted him to the man.

"When he learned about our relationship, he felt it was his responsibility to find me, to apologize for forgetting." He shook his head and refilled his own glass. "That has nothing to do with desire. It's too easy to incite his guilt."

Alex just frowned when he slammed the table, and she took another longer drink of the grappa, trying to swallow over her wince when she did. But refilling her glass was an easy choice, she couldn't help it. This conversation called for more liquor than was already in her system, and she was going to help with that.

"I know you weren't trying to incite his guilt, Dorian. I don't think you'd ever want someone just because they felt guilty enough to be with you. And as someone who cares," which was a little of an understatement, because everyone knew Alex cared about everyone. "I think that you're forgetting that you're still you and he's still him and he had feelings for you once. I refuse to believe that you're not going to be able to incite similiar things in him now."

Alex believed in love, and she wanted it for her friends, which was why she added, "you deserve it, Dorian. Don't push it away if he wants to give it."

She always spoke with such conviction when she insisted these little things of him, which admittedly was a painfully new occurrence and there was a very real part of him that was quickly regretting ever opening up to her in the first place. In the morning, or whenever it occurred to him, he'd decide to blame the grappa of course, a poor choice for drink for a casual night with a semi-close friend. Foolish. Won't be repeated.

It was almost easy to believe her, so earnest was she about his worth. It had been a year here, surrounded by others who saw that same thing within him. He was almost starting to believe it himself.

Almost.

"He's only sought me out the once, to apologize." It was a flimsy argument, he knew, but an argument nonetheless. It wouldn't do to simply give in, though the temptation was great. Life had shown him too many times 'hope' was fleeting, and not something in which he should waste his time...or dash his heart.

Alex Reagan was an earnest sort of person, and she was best suited to breaking down shields. It was a thing that was inherent in her, and like alchemy, Alex could turn people's shields into a water that she just stepped easily through. She'd done it with loads of people who she cared for, and more back at home. People trusted Alex easily to tell her their most intimate secrets and trust her enough to put them on the air. Maybe Dorian just didn't have a choice.

But it doesn't mean that she doesn't believe in him and want the best for him. Tomorrow, when she's nursing her slight hangover, because grappa and Greece, she's going to consider reaching out to Mangus just to see what happens, and get the feelers out for Dorian. It's nothing less than she'd do for her other friends.

"Maybe," she countered quickly, taking another sip of her drink. Her arguing skills while drunk or otherwise elsewhere were occupied (Richard Strand could be a complete ass at times) were becoming easier now, thanks to that. "Maybe he's worried about crowding and pushing at you, Dorian. I would be."

It was possible Dorian might come to resent her for it, or be thankful for it, it may even fluctuate one day to the next. He despised being vulnerable, and he was so often it made casual interaction beyond jesting or teasing uncomfortable. If no one knew you, they were unable to harm you, after all. A good portion of him trusted Alex, and that was all that was keeping him from bolting at this point. There were precious few people he trusted at all, with even superficial secrets, let alone the things he'd told her.

"But you aren't Magnus, are you?" To spite his fear that Magnus was giving him any sort of attention out of a feeling of obligation, something he would like to avoid at all costs, he was still very protective of the man. He didn't like the idea of someone presuming to know him or his intentions.

“No,” The words came softly and there was a gentle smile that went along with it. Alex was good at listening but she could be better at convincing people of things when she wanted or needed to be. Right now she wanted her friend to be happy and it sounded like this man would be one of the people to do it for Dorian. There was a small part of her that wanted to contact Mangus but it wasn’t her place to do so. But he had left her a little bit of an opening so Alex was going to drive right through it so to speak.

“But he sounds like me you know, from how you’ve described him. So I’m kinda basing it on that. And how fantastic you are of course. I don’t think you give yourself enough credit for that, Dorian. You’re brilliant and any man would be glad to have you if they would just see that.”

There was some small part of Alex that just wanted all of her friends to be as happy in their romantic entanglements as she is.

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