Chapter Text
Dorian gets the door when his tracker says his pizza has arrived, looks down, and stops. His brain grinds to a halt when the short, lean, bright, beautiful, amazing man with his pizza smiles at him and says, “Hey, Dorian Storm?”
Dorian nods mutely. The delivery halfling is… gorgeous. Handsome isn’t enough to describe the him, not when he’s fine boned and sharp eyed and shifting fluidly from foot to foot like an incredibly graceful fidget, keeping the bag the pizzas are in balanced on one arm.
“It’s gonna be $24.51,” the halfling says.
“...Do you have change?” Dorian asks, grabbing a bill from his wallet without looking at it.
The halfling’s smile turns wry, and he gets infinitely hotter with that little bit of personality shining through. He says something in a voice that plucks the strings of Dorian’s heart like a harp and leaves him vibrating, starving for more. He doesn’t particularly hear it over his pulse pounding in his ears, but the halfling is getting his pizzas out of the bag and looking at him like he's waiting for something.
They trade, the bill in Dorian’s hand for the two pizzas he ordered on a whim. The halfling is saying something else, tugging the hem of his shirt up, and Dorian slams the door before he can do or say or think anything unwise a little too loudly. He leans with his back against the door, staring up at the chandelier, with pizza burning his hand and his heart hammering in his chest.
Fuck.
“Every goddamn night,” Chetney says, checking and double checking the final count of Orym’s tips.
“You know it,” Orym says, sitting on the top step of the step ladder that makes a second chair in the closet of an office.
Chetney is in the rolling chair with the broken wheel, checking his count against the computer for the third time. “I seriously don’t get how you do this.”
“Halfling luck?” Orym tries. He doesn’t know how he makes such good tips either. It’s not a huge amount more than anyone else, but it’s a little more, every single night, no matter which shift he works or how busy they are.
“Last driver I had making this kind of money was doing side-work, if you catch my drift.”
It takes Orym a second, but he laughs. “You caught me, Chet. I’m giving a seven dollar strip tease now, and still getting back in thirty minutes or less.”
Chetney snorts. “I was talking more about the hot fresh hundo you turned in tonight.”
“Yeah. That was kind of weird. Some kind of anxiety thing going on with a guy on Lantern Street, I think. Asked for change, handed me the bill, didn’t take the change, didn’t answer when I rang the bell again. I dunno. Maybe he’ll order again.” He rubs his chin, thinking about it. He didn’t see many air genasi in Jrusar, and definitely not many with the kind of money it takes to live on Lantern Street. Dorian Storm looked young, too. A student maybe? But with that kind of money to just throw around…
It’s not really Orym’s business, but he gave him the biggest tip he’s seen in a long time, and he’s a little curious. “If he orders again, I’ll ask him what’s going on.”
Orym makes a two minute detour on the way home, just before midnight. He doesn’t know why he takes a left, then a right onto Lantern Street, or why he slows down in front of the big white house he delivered to earlier today, or what he expects to happen when he comes to a stop in front of Dorian Storm’s house, but he turns off his moped and walks it a few feet, past the porch, past the flowerbeds, not able to rationalize stopping but slowing down as much as he can, just for a minute. He’s just… curious. Curious about this guy, but with no way to ask any of the half formed questions rattling around in his brain.
There’s music playing. Quiet classical violin music is floating down from an open window on the second floor that Orym slows down to listen to. There’s a sour note, and the music stops, then picks back up from the beginning. Someone is playing a violin. Someone is playing a violin beautifully.
Orym isn’t musically gifted. He can’t tell good music from a hole in the ground, but this sounds good, the kind of good that people spend their whole lives working toward, and fall short of when they don’t have the raw talent to get them there. He quiets his breathing and listens for as long as he can convince himself to. It’s… incredible. He’s never heard anything like this. Not that he’s ever looked for it.
As soon as he’s too far away to hear clearly, Orym hops back on his moped and kicks it to life. He can’t stay outside of a stranger’s, a customer’s, house all night, listening to him play the violin. He needs to sleep, for one, and for another that’s definitely stalking.
And if he finds a youtube playlist of solo violin pieces to listen to while he winds down from work and gets ready for bed, that’s between him and his vpn.