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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"Ah," Orpheus says, nodding, and he thinks he might know who the boy is now.

"In that case, can he not do whatever he likes?"

Orpheus has always seen that as the only possible temptation of power.

"He's very intense about being sane and sensible and virtuous and nothing like Nero or Caligula," Antinoos says. "Absolute power corrupts absolutely, he says, so he has to prove every day he's uncorrupted. He works like a plough oxen in spring."

Long pause.

"There is this thing I hear here..."

"Well, he's not wrong there." He's seen quite a lot of corrupt rulers.

"And what is that?"

Another long pause.

Then, it all rushes out.

"That I'm still sort of famous in the far future because I killed myself and he grieved so badly he declared me a god, which makes him as bad as Nero or Caligula, doesn't it? He still loves me so much he sort of loses it when I die. And I don't want to die, I ant to stay alive and stay with him and maybe think about a different future when he dies because that's very likely as he's a lot older than me. He survived me by six years, their history say, but that might not happen if I manage to stay alive and with him so he's not going to lose it altogether? On the other hand, what if it takes my death for him to realise how much he still loves me and always will?"

He takes a breath and goes on.

"And if their future's true I don't even have half a year left to live. I don't want to die, and I don't want to leave him, and I don't want him to kick me out because he never realises..."

That is...an awful lot for Orpheus to take in given his current state.

"So don't kill yourself," is just about the best he can do on such short notice.

"I'm not going to!" Antinoos says. "Not now that I know how much he really loves me. So if I still die, somebody would have murdered me. Perhaps somebody will be going to have murdered me all along, and they only believed I killed myself? Isn't it all bloody scary and confusing?"

"It always is, knowing your future." He would know. He's told a few people theirs.

"It drives me up the walls!" Antinoos declares, frustrated. "It's an obstacle course of paradoxes and what-ifs. And all I want is stay alive and with my lover."

"Stay alive then. Stay with him as much as you can. Beyond that, it's out of your control. The only sure way of sealing your fate is to attempt to change it."

"It's rather a large leap of faith," Antinoos says, softly. "Can't I at least try and tell him how much I love him?"

"You can and you should," Orpheus says. "If you're sure of it." That is something he very much believes in.

"I am!" Antinoos declares, immediately. "No doubt about that."

"Then leave him in no doubt of it."

"It's not how it's supposed to go, as he's the erastes and I'm the eromenos," Antinoos says. "Putting myself forward in that way is considered too manly behaviour, showing I'm really not that coy boy toy that's meant to be pursued, not the pursuer, any more. It's all bloody complicated and, actually, terminally silly; but I guess I love him too much not to try."

Orpheus waves a dismissive hand. "Then find the coyest way possible to tell him. If he truly loves you, it will make no difference to him.

"Only, perhaps don't do it in front of the Senate."

Now, Antinoos giggles terrible at the mental image.

"In strict private!" he says. "With not even the slaves there."

"Then he needn't worry if it's proper or not."

He manages a bit of a smile at that.

"No," Antinoos says. "It shouldn't be so hard. But things are changing, one way or another."

"As they must."

He shrugs. "He's the emperor. Who's to complain if he keeps you on as an adviser when you've outgrown your current role?"

"Nobody will really dare," Antinoos admits. "Apart from the people who take it out on me in small sneaky ways. But they already do that, so I probably just have to get used to that changing slightly as well."

"Then I think the situation is not so dire as you have been imagining."

"But it can't be allowed to just go on the way it's been," Antinoos says. "Letting things slide and fester would be bad."

"No, but you've decided on that already."

"Yes," Antinoos says. "They'll be dealt with."

He sounds very decided, and quite grown-up, as he says that.

Orpheus snickers a little at that. To his ears, the boy sounds very like someone who is trying to be grown-up.