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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"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.

Antinoos had been thinking of his trouble with Hadrian, and his own presumable imminent death, in the back of his head anyway, on and off; and his curiosity being woken by he grin of that man had brought his predicament to the fore.

Now, melancholy strikes him full force all of a sudden. He loves Hadrian -- but has he ever known Hadrian himself, apart from the Roman emperor? If they were just a man and a youth, would they have a chance after all? Would they even have fallen in love?

It was just one chord, but Antinoos finds himself rubbing his eyes as that falls silent, and despite it, he looks at the drunken man and asks, "Why do you stop?" as somehow, he wants more of this, even if the music of this guitar thing is apparently infinitely sad.

Orpheus flexes his fingers, stiff in addition to raw, and sets the guitar aside.

In answer, he holds out a hand, fingers up. The tip of each fingers are red and raw, the skin broken in some places.

"That must hurt!" Antinoos says. "I'm sorry. Who made you play so much?"

"Nobody," he mutters. "I myself."

"That is" -- actually something that some of the wilder musicians whom Antinoos knows might do -- "extreme, but I guess you were inspired?"

Perhaps because the guitar is divine?

Orpheus huffs out a gruff laugh.

"Inspiration comes in many forms."

"This one does sound a bit compulsive and unpleasant," Antinoos says. "As if the music were taking you over. Is it because of the divinity of your instrument?"

To his credit, it must be said he hardly giggles this time.

Edited 2012-08-11 20:08 (UTC)

"No," Orpheus says, not at all reacting to the giggle this time. "It's because of the pain in my heart."

"Everybody has it, one way or another," Antinoos says, thinking of what he felt at that one single chord. "What happened?"

"Don't want to talk about it," he mumbles, getting another refill.

He's just getting over a bender. No need to start another so soon.

"Fair enough," Antinoos says. "Things like that are so bloody painful."

At least for him, they are.

Orpheus gives him a look like 'oh, kid, you have no idea.'

"So they say."

"I say so as well!" Antinoos says.

To a teenager, as he still is, their own angst always is the centre of the world, and the lodestone of everything else.

"Then I guess it must be true," Orpheus answers, voice dripping with sarcasm.

"Well, your finger tips must hurt like hell," Antinoos points out, all sensibly, "so I guess the rest must be even worse for them to have got in that state?"

"You'd guess right."

Honestly, who would rate sore fingers above a broken heart in terms of pain?