milliways_bar | (no subject)

[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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"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.

Antinoos is nineteen -- the awkward end of an awkward phase, that he's tried to go through as gracefully as possible, for the sake of being a fitting companion to Hadrian.

"It's not funny," he says. "Those are big life decisions."

"Indeed they are," Orpheus agrees.

He still seems like a very young boy to Orpheus.

"It's not my fault that I'm at that age where I need to make them," Antinoos says.

"Nor that you have all of your life ahead of you still."

"I wish I could say that for certain," Antinoos says. "I think a prophesy of 'You'll die soon' is a very strange thing to hang over anybody's head. Perhaps believing that and showing the fig to all the doom and gloom and getting on with my life would be my best option."

Something else occurs to him.

"You know who I am, though. But I have no idea who you might be, unless..."

It used to be a lyre.

"... unless you're actually Orpheus?"

"Who else would I be?" Orpheus asks, arching an eyebrow.

"It is an honour to meet you," Antinoos says, his voice growing quiet and almost awed.

And actual demi-god has told him that he has his life ahead still: - so what are all the history books from the future, compared to that?

"I was told gods came here, but you're the first I meet," he adds.

Orpheus has not been greeted like that in a very, very long time. It seems extraordinarily ironic for it to happen again when he's in his current state.

"I'm not a god," he points out.

"A demigod, or heros," Antinoos says. "Still, no mere mortal, and worthy of our reverence."

Yes, he is awed. And feels oddly freed, knowing that it was Orpheus who had said all these things to him.

So there really is hope.

"Not worthy of reverence," Orpheus argues, frowning a bit. "That's not a word I'd use."

"Our attention, at least," Antinoos says. "You are special."

"That I'll allow," Orpheus says with a faint smirk.

"I am glad I met you," Antinoos says, "under the weather though you are."

"Thanks," Orpheus says with a cynical laugh.

"I cannot help you there," Antinoos says. "What shall I do, spake Zeus: - the gods are drunk! But I have a feeling you've helped me a lot just now."

"Well, good. I hope so."

Something good should have come from all this.

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