milliways_bar | (no subject)

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The costume Orpheus is gifted with when he comes into the bar tonight is quite simple compared to previous years. Perhaps that is in deference to the conversation he just had.

Whatever the reason, he is grateful, both for the simplicity and for the disguise, such as it is.

Making his way to a booth in the corner, he slides into it, guitar settled across his lap. A passing rat is accosted for a bowl of heady, honeyed wine, and then he places his fingers on the strings of his guitar and...

plays nothing.

There is nothing to play for this.

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Steve shakes his head. "I don't."

"That I shouldn't have gone after her," Orpheus says quietly. He usually has to be much drunker before he talks like this. Much drunker and much more belligerent. The wine he ordered hasn't even gone to his head.

"That she...didn't want me to. She didn't want to be rescued."

Steve closes his eyes, mouth twisting.

"I think anyone who says that doesn't understand love of any stripe. You rescue the ones you love when they're in trouble. It's as simple as that."

He's not just thinking of Eurydice.

He nods thoughtfully.

"Maybe...that's why she came."

Steve has to wait a moment before he asks, his voice trembling, "Because you're in trouble?"

"She said I was. That I was troubled." He knows that's not the same thing, but the way Steve had said it, it clicked with him.

Steve nods, eyes pricking. "Is she right?"

He braces himself. Even though Orpheus told him to stay, it still feels like an ending is about to come.

"I don't know. I suppose she must be."

Some dreams, after all, are True Things, and this was definitely one of them.

"I..." He hesitates. What he wants to say is difficult, and he has not admitted it aloud, has not even really let himself think it.

"This is...such a place. Anyone can come here..."

"And if she," he inhales, "walks through that door..."

He thought he'd come to terms with Eurydice, but for a moment he loathes her for dying and leaving Orpheus so lost.

"I don't know."

He feels as though he doesn't know anything, or at least as though Steve must be tired of hearing him say that.

The thing is, he always holds himself back in relationships, but here...he has more reason to than before.

"She said...that I should open my heart."

Steve can only nod. He wipes his eyes with the back of his hand as unobtrusively as possible.

"I don't know what she means," Orpheus says, as close as he has ever come to lying to Steve.

[ooc: Bedtime for me.]

That's too bad, because Steve really needs to hear the truth right now.

"I don't either," is all he says.

[ooc: Good night!]

Edited 2012-11-01 05:36 (UTC)

Orpheus is quiet for a long moment.

Eventually he says, carefully, "It's difficult sometimes."

"What is?" Steve whispers.

"Opening my heart," he says. "It...takes some...prying. And even then..."

Steve only traces over Orpheus's heart with his knuckles in response.

"I just..." He lays his hand on top of Steve's. "It takes a lot of patience."

Steve lays his hand flat on Orpheus's chest.

He says, after a long pause, "I'm not asking you for anything you're not ready or willing to give me.

"What I said in the beginning is still true. When you're done with me, just tell me, okay?"

"It's not..." He shakes his head, stroking his fingers over the back of Steve's hand. "I'm not going to be done with you. You're stuck with me until you tell me to go."

Steve exhales slowly and holds Orpheus a little tighter. "Then we're stuck with each other for a good long time, sweetheart."

"I just wanted you to know what it is you're in for," Orpheus says.

Steve smiles against his hair. "You think I didn't already?"

"I think you still don't."

Steve sighs a little. "You think I don't know what it's like to need somebody so much you'd face death for them?" he says quietly. "Or that their loss would haunt you for the rest of your life? Or that you only feel," he stops and swallows, "complete, when you're with that person? Only feel whole? Or to look into somebody's face and think, 'Yeah, you're it for me'?"

He stops again, and says roughly, "Yeah, I have no idea what that's like."