milliways_bar | (no subject)

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[OOM: If I could I would make you a raging river,
with angry rapids, supplied with rain,
so you could always meander
and forever be able to run away
without contending with myths wrongly interpreted, with pain.
A harsh wind.]

One of the odd (and sometimes quite nice) things about Milliways is that time works differently here.

So while it was only last night that Orpheus fled from the apparently terrifying prospect of dancing with someone he genuinely cared about, from the perspective of the bar, it's been about a week for him in Paris.

He's hardly eaten or showered since he left, and he's still slightly inebriated as he stumbles into the bar, reeking of cigarettes and alcohol. He seems surprised to find himself there, and stumbles into an empty table.

"Oops, sorry," he mutters, not looking to see who he might be apologizing to, and carries his guitar (fingers raw from playing for nearly a week straight) to the bar to get another drink.

The trouble with releasing your emotions in a torrent on the city of Paris is that it leaves you rather, well, drained.

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Orpheus is far too exhausted, far too wrapped up in himself to notice one young man eyeing his instrument.

He finishes his drink and taps the bar for a refill, wincing again.

That man is well and truly drunk, and on his way to becoming utterly legless. He's probably not notice if somebody stole his nose.

Tentatively, Antinoos touches a string on the guitar, to hear what kind of sound-unlike-a-kithara it makes.

He notices that.

Orpheus' hand snakes out, quick as lightning, wrapping around the man's wrist before he reaches that string.

"Don't," he says, voice rough and low and just a little bit dangerous.

Antinoos jumps.

"Oh, by Zeus, I am sorry!" he gushes. "I just wanted to hear what it sounds like, really, it's so big, nothing like a kithara from where I'm from, I mean no harm to your, erm, instrument, just wondering how it's played because we don't have them and I thought you were too far in your cups for me to ask you for a song, oh gods I'm babbling, am I?"

That drunken man who reacts with a lightning speed and strength no drunken man could possibly have, in Antinoos experience, is rather scary and startled him to his bones. Not just an ordinary human he annoyed here, Antinoos reckons.

"You're not some god or mutant, are you?"

"No," Orpheus mutters by way of assurance, letting go of the boy's hand. "Just don't touch it."

"I thought you were more drunk than you are," Antinoos says.

That mutter does sound very drunk.

"What kind of instrument is that?"

He is quite drunk, but he is almost never that drunk that he'd let someone else touch his guitar.

"Guitar. Used to be a lyre."

"Used to be?" Antinoos says.

It makes no sense to him. So many things here don't make sense.

"A lyre? It doesn't look much like one. I've played lyres."

"Isn't one anymore," Orpheus points out. His voice is rough from overuse and smoking.

"It doesn't look like one," Antinoos agrees. "How is a lyre a guitar now?"

You don't take apart a musical instrument and build another from the pieces. That's not how it works at all, in his knowledge.

"It just is." The how doesn't matter, really. It's probably not best to ask for practical explanations from a drunk man. And the best answer he could give, even sober, would be 'Apollo.'

"It's been other things."

"Then it's magical in some way?" Antinoos guesses. "What would have happened if I'd touched it? Would I have turned into a laurel tree?"

Music. Apollo. Laurels. That's a very logical train of thought to a Greek youth.

Orpheus gives a low, distracted laugh.

"If you'd touched it, I'd have broken your hand."

He's not violent by nature, but there are things that will drive him to it.

Oddly enough, Antinoos laughs at that.

"But that's not magical at all," he says. "I could break people's hands if I had to."

"Didn't say it was magic," Orpheus says.

Though it is, sort of.

"But it must be, to become different things," Antinoos says. "I mean, you don't break a lyre apart and make something else from the pieces. That's not how making instruments work. And I've seen that done."

"Didn't ask that," Orpheus points out. "You asked what'd happen if you touched it."

He can only answer one question at a time.

Edited 2012-08-11 16:33 (UTC)

Antinoos giggles. "My, you're totally trashed" -- he uses a comparable koiné slang expression -- "when you're not defending your instrument. Kay. One question at a time. Is your instrument magical?"

He giggles again, because that sounds vaguely naughty, and he is only nineteen.

Orpheus waggles his eyebrows at the implication of that giggle. "It's divine."

Take that as you will.

Antinoos giggles in earnest now, if there can be such a thing.

"By what proof?" he says, unable to keep his eyes from sliding sideways from the guitar to, erm, where the other thing would be...

Orpheus gives him a definitely drunken grin.

"Wanna find out?

"Well," Antinoos says, "anything you can show me down here, I'm up for!"

He's oddly curious about the rest, and wouldn't mind some harmless flirting, but is acutely aware as always, that any practical curiosity about anything else is not a good idea, as he's the eromenos of the damn Roman emperor, and somebody would find out.

Yes, he loves Hadrian. Sincerely. But he's also nineteen, and curious at times.

Orpheus reaches for his guitar and gives a quick glance around the bar to see if the Goth is anywhere nearby. If he's disappointed to be limited to music, he doesn't show it.

He sets the guitar in his lap, meaning to play a quick, teasing refrain, but when he sets his fingers to the strings, the pain he's been ignoring in them flares up, and he doesn't get out more than a chord before he's hissing and pulling his hand away from the strings.

[ooc: He probably would if he were sober... :)]

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