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Title: Rolling eyes to the rolling of the waves.
Rating: G
Fandom: LXG
Characters: Mina and Dorian
Summary: There was once a man who was not just a man and a woman who was not just a woman, but were themselves all the same.
Disclaimer: Not mine. No money is being made at all.
Author's Notes: Written for Citizen Kane/#3 over on 10_quotes

The water was glorious, a magnificent sheet that went beyond the horizon, so bright that if her cold shell had allowed it Mina Harker would have cried at it's loveliness. A base of sapphire, aquamarine tints, diamond and pearl crests that reached and fell in gentle gallops to the determined press of the Nautilus' bulk and glistened beneath a topaz sun: she was surrounded by wealth.

"More precious than gold," she murmured, raising a hand to her brow and gazing across the expanse.

"Commiserating Mina?" She repressed a sigh and lowered her limb, smoothly replacing her expression of genuine contentment with her usual accruement of amused disdain. "I've never known you to be sentimental."

"I believe recent events prove what we once knew of each other to be more fiction that fact." Dorian nodded in discrete acknowledgement of his own secrecy before his dark gaze fell pointedly to the elegant curve of her throat, now covered in cloth and velvet—far from the extravagant beaded chokers she would wear religiously while in his. . .company.

"Surprises indeed," his eyebrow rose lasciviously, a knowing smirk blooming. Mina rolled her eyes and turned back to the ocean. "But what would this tedious business called 'life' be if we didn't stretch the truth now and then."

"Stretch?" she inquired lazily. "Is that what you would call what we did?" Oh there had been so many lies on both sides. Dorian moved closer, one pant leg of his impeccable suit brushing and staying against her black skirt.

"We did many things Mina. But I would never insult you to call it simply 'stretching'." His teeth were very white and he wore the same cologne she used to anticipate the scent of on nights when they frequented the theatre, the opera, this lord or that lady's gathering of various individuals. They had done many things together and Mina despised the frisson of heat that snaked through her abdomen at the memory. His vitality and love of life and 'damn the consequences' speech had thrilled her to no end after years spent in guilt and seclusion.

But that had been before he broke her heart, and the vampire gave no sign that his words had touched her whatsoever. Eventually her indifferent gaze rattled him enough to change his mode of declaration. "More precious than gold, eh Mina?" Dorian watched the rolling of the waves with little interest and a look of some small contempt. "But it wouldn't buy us back all that wine and jewels and vice." He chuckled humorlessly and glanced her way. "It wouldn't buy us back time." To this Mina said nothing. Time was a great leveler and she had more than she could possibly ever use. She suppose the same could be said of him. "If I hadn't been very rich, I might have been a really great man."

Mina's lips quirked up at this nonsense for they both knew Dorian hadn't been very rich, merely lucky in his choice of fair-weather friends and bankers. And that he would now place blame all his debauches on money was utterly ridiculous, but Mina played along.

"Don't you think you are?" She smirked, showing Dorian what she really thought. He pursed his lips, amusing her with his quickly changing moods. He was annoyed at her reluctance to be wooed by his charm, but that was nothing new.

"I think I did rather well under the circumstances." He was picking invisible lint off his sleeve in a gesture that would have been home in the finer parts of London; it was insensible here on the water and Mina rolled her eyes again, a harder note in her voice.

"What would you like to have been? Enlighten me Dorian." Circumstances. What did the peacock know of circumstances?! He made his own choices like every other creature in the world and while her own deceit had been to cover up a trick of supernatural impossibility his had been to publicly humiliate her on the grounds of Camden Town, courting a sweet young thing of seventeen.

"Everything you hate."

Mina blinked. Dorian turned once more and for a moment she believed he would reach out to her; something in her expression must have held him back and it was wisely done.

"I would have rather lived a life without knowledge of you Mina," he spoke softly, "without knowing your beauty, your temperament, and—perhaps I flatter myself—your love, than have you stand before me now in complete indifference to me and the pain I keep at our separation."

It was a wonderful coincidence that the Nautilus dipped, alerting those gathered above sea level that the Queen was preparing to submerge for Mina had no rejoinder at the ready, no appropriate comment or sneer that would fit and still make her feel victory in the conversation. While the vampire's rational and sharp mind knew words were as smoke to Dorian and worth just the same, her woman's heart could not hope but that Dorian did feel pain and much of it. She certainly had.

"I believe the time has come to return to our quarters."

She didn't wait for his reply.