golden_lyre | The Drowning Fiddler

Entry tags:

eurydice

The Drowning Fiddler

The Drowning Fiddler is a little pub in Earl's Court that Orpheus has been visiting, on and off, for about two hundred years now. In more recent decades, the basement has been remodeled to double as a concert venue, and a number of bands who went on to be famous got their start on its cramped stage. Having spent a good deal of time and a good deal of coin at the bar, Orpheus has come to know the owner, Martin, well enough that he's occasionally asked to fill in for any musicians who back out at the last minute or on any nights when the stage isn't booked.

(Orpheus suspects that Martin keeps nights open when business isn't going well, so Orpheus can help him pick up the slack. Orpheus doesn't mind. He always puts a little encouragement to drink in his music when he plays. Martin deserves it.)

It's a Wednesday night, and though that's the Fiddler's least busy night in general, the room is packed. There wasn't a lot of time for advertising, but since the advent of social media (something Orpheus still can't quite get his head around), a few hours is all the notice needed to fill a room when he plays.

There's no amplification system because Orpheus never needs one, and there's no one to introduce him. He just sidles onto the stage, whiskey in one hand, cigarette in the other, and takes a seat on a wooden stool. As he settles himself (whiskey on an unused amplifier, guitar in his lap, still lit cigarette tucked between two strings), the room gradually quiets, but anyone still speaking comes to a hush when Orpheus starts to play.

He starts off with something quiet, something that feels like a Wednesday night, a needed breath of fresh air and freedom in the middle of the week. The room relaxes in the wake of it, as if communally exhaling in relief, and Orpheus smiles, loving the moment he knows he has the audience in the palm of his hand.

A quick sip of whiskey, a couple of drags on his cigarette as he retunes his guitar, and then he plays what they all came here to hear.

Something to dance to.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

There are tears in his eyes as well, but his smile never wavers, even as they slide down his cheeks. He holds her close, watching her face as she touches him, wanting to see every expression, every emotion that crosses her face.

When her fingers move into his hair, he presses his face to her neck, breathing her in. "You're here. You're here and alive, and I'm still not sure I'm not dreaming, but I don't care."

So long as he never wakes up, he's happy to live in this dream forever.

"You're not dreaming," she promises, a whispered prayer across his ear. "My love, you are not dreaming. We are awake and alive and I love you so much."

She's properly crying, now, her emotions finally catching up to her - finding him again against all odds, loving him physically, knowing that he's here, with her... it's joy, but it's almost painful.

"I have missed you for more years than I care to count," she sobs quietly into his shoulder, and while she doesn't care to count them, she has. "Will you stay?"

He wraps himself around her just to be certain she's not going to slip away. The tumble of emotions, both his and hers, is too much to contain, and he's laughing and weeping into her hair.

"I will stay," he says, his voice rough, squeezing painful past the lump in his throat. "I will stay with you always."

Just now he thinks he might never let her go. His breaths are shuddering, and he feels the weight of three thousand years of guilt weighing down on him. "Oh my love," he whispers. "I'm sorry. I'm so very sorry."

She has absolutely no intention of going anywhere, and if a tangle of limbs is the goal, they've achieved it. Still joined in the most intimate way, Eurydice feels home at last. Home is where he is. Where they are.

His apology prompts fresh tears. She'd been so close to the sunlight - two more steps and they'd have lived these years together. But that wasn't what happened, and her agony and rage and despair over a single error have long since run their course.

"I forgive you."

And she had, millennia ago. How can she fault him for loving her? Whether he forgives himself, though...

He may never forgive himself, but hearing those words from her sends a flood of relief through him that overflows into a wave of tears. He can hear all of it in her voice: the rage and despair giving way to forgiveness. The truth of it, distilled down into three words, has him weeping into her hair.

It doesn't lift the entire weight, but it gives him a pillar to help with it.

That’s all she could ask for. She is the cause of his grief and guilt, so if she can help him accept peace in himself now, she will.

Her fingers run soothingly over his scalp as he cries into her hair, his arms locked about her so all she can do is touch him tenderly and whisper quietly over and over that she loves him, she forgives him, she loves him, she forgives.

“My precious Orpheus,” she kisses his temple, her own tears still falling. “I’m sorry I had to leave you, that I was gone for so long. But we have forever now. All the years we could ever want.”

Her words soak into him like rain in the desert, and gradually his tears slow and his breath steadies. She loves him and she forgives him, and whatever else comes their way, he can live on that alone.

His arms loosen slightly, and he pulls back to look at her, to cup her cheek in his palm. "Not one iota of blame rests on you, my love. Not for any of this." Leaning up, he kisses tears from her cheeks. "But if you forgive me, and I forgive you, let us put the entire affair behind us and start again, with the whole of our lives ahead of us."

He doesn't know if he'll be able to put it behind him completely, but in this moment, anything seems possible.

She shifts her head just enough to press a kiss to the mound of his thumb, her eyes closing as he follows the gesture to kiss away her tears. She smiles, sniffling slightly, then huffs a quiet laugh.

"I can do that," she murmurs, and rolls her hips to let him slide out of her, so she can stretch herself along his side. "I can definitely do that."

Her foot lifts to shove gently at the rest of his jeans, which did not previously make it all the way off him. Nudity, please. Skin to skin and heart to heart and soul to soul.

"...I nearly started an orgy tonight because of you," she remembers suddenly, and grins against his shoulder. London would not have been prepared for quite the sort of thing she can induce.

Her laugh tugs at the corners of his mouth, and when he kicks his jeans away he laughs, shifting onto his side and tangling his legs with hers. Eternity, which has ever seemed a daunting and lonely prospect, suddenly looks bright with possibility. He takes her hand in his, weaving their fingers together, and presses a warm kiss to the curve of her neck.

"I remember," he says with a laugh that is just a little bit smug. "There are places we could do that still, but I am happy to keep all of you for myself for quite a while longer."

She’d never thought to hold and be held like this by him again. Her fingers squeeze his gently in response, and she wriggles slightly so their bodily entwinement won’t send her leg to sleep. He’s not leaving her bed til morning. If ever. Skin to skin is what she needs.

Of course, a bed isn’t what they were used to, but times change. Her love for him hasn’t.

He remembers. She grins, mischief and joy sparkling in her green eyes.

“Probably not in London, anyway, unless you want to wear leather. It’s a whole scene, I’m told.” She presses her nose to his jaw and inhales. “And I’ve only just found you again. I don’t want to share.”

"I've worn that leather and experienced that scene," Orpheus says with a laugh, caught by the joy in her eyes, bringing her hand to his lips to kiss the inside of her wrist, murmuring against her skin. "But I would much rather see you naked in a grove of trees than harnessed and put on display."

Not that he wouldn't happily show her off, but he's jealous of her for now, and that's not likely to change any time soon.

His eyes close and he inhales the scent of her, of the both of them together. "Gods, my love. I feel as if my heart would burst, and I almost wish it would."

“Oh, really!” She teases, and nips gently at his jaw where she’s just been nuzzling. “I’m imagining you in leather, now, starting riots.”

A beat as she kisses the same place she’d just bitten.

“But we share that preference. It’s... that’s who we are. Maybe we could find something, somewhere..?”

Nature ramble. Countryside. Britain is full of the magic of their old gods, there will be something to welcome them somewhere.

She hitches herself up on one elbow, watching his face as memories locked away for thousands of years are drawn forth by things so simple as touch and scent.

“If you think I’m letting your heart burst now after so long without you, Orpheus, you are sorely mistaken. No bursting. Just love. Our love.”

She leans in to kiss him, seeking to remind and reassure.

"Mm, maybe another time," Orpheus says with a grin, a surprise laugh leaping from him when she bites.

He smiles up at her as her hair falls between them, making a canopy around them. "There are places in the mountains of Wales we could go. Into the old places." There are places of the world where it is easier to feel the age of the earth.

Her kiss brings him all the reassurance he could want, and he hums into it, pleased and comfortable. "My love, I want my heart to burst so that it will break into a thousand pieces and each of them will fall into your eyes and live there forever."

“I’d like that.”

It’s not Hellas. But nothing is, anymore. Old country is old country. The earth and the gods will still feel and be felt.

Tucked away behind the curtain of her curls, his eyes speak almost as much as his words, and she all but melts against him.

“You’ve been something of a muse, my love,” she tells him, gently. “When I came to this city, I danced in auditions for schools, and the song I chose was by someone who has surely made sacrifices because her words and voice moved me so... she has a small spark of you in her, I think. It was all I had. But to echo a poet I met, I will carry your heart with me.”

Orpheus travels to the old places when he's lonely or weary or tired of the crowds of mortals around him. Taking Eurydice with him will be a much different experience. Taking Eurydice with him anywhere will make it a much different experience.

"I'm glad." His voice is gruff, heavy with gratitude for whatever musicians brought her a part of him. "I have seen you in others on occasion. It was not enough, but it was so much better than nothing at all." It made him ache every time, but he relished the pain of it.

She would love to visit anywhere he’d like to go. She’s had the benefit of the memories recounted by thousands of shades in her time in the Underworld, but to set foot in those places remembered so fondly would be an utter delight. And with him? She can’t put a word to it. They’ll have to plan a holiday. Or a hundred thousand. They have, quite literally, all the time in the world.

“I danced for you, tonight,” she murmurs, trailing a delicate finger along his jaw. “I’d thought the name an affectation, but the music was primal and I gave myself to it for you.”

Her mouth follows the wake of her fingertips.

“And then it really was you. And now, I am made whole again.”

There are so many places Orpheus wants to take her. He would start immediately, but she seems to have a life here, friends and school, and he's in no hurry to whisk her away from it so long as he can share in it.

"I felt you there." He closes his eyes, moving with her touch, a smile settling on his lips. "I didn't know what it was, but I could feel you in the room. I played for you, for the energy you put into the room. I didn't dare hope it was you."

His fingers dance up her thigh, and he laughs, bright, musical, and full of startled joy. "But it was you. Gods above and below, it was really you." His heart seems to swell as the realization sets in once again.

He can share in it. She'd be delighted if he would. Honoured, if he would. But there's nothing to stop them travelling in her holidays, and once she graduates, she can dance anywhere in the world. And he'll be with her, she hopes.

"I always dance for you."

Since the day she laid eyes on him. She always has, she always will, whether he was present or not. It's a simple truth, murmured against the stubble along his jaw. But that laugh - that laugh! She's immediately grinning with joy, because she can't not.

"It's as if we're fated, you and I," she teases, hitching her knee higher up in response to his dancing fingers. So much of her to relearn awaits his questing touch. "And now here we are, with all eternity ahead of us. Which will start tomorrow, because I've been awake since before dawn and even immortal beings need sleep."

A beat, during which she presses a gentle kiss to his mouth, his mouth that she's missed for three millennia and then some.

"Eventually."

Morning will come sooner than they might like, though, and her cat will probably be returned at that point. Maybe. It depends how much she's been spoilt on her current visit. Katie might give in to Jonah and let the boy keep Ree's cat all day. It's happened many times.

She grins and it buoys his heart as though it's floating on the sea of her joy. Another time, he knows, he'll have to leave her side so that she can go about her life as though the entire universe hadn't changed in one moment when his eyes met hers.

But not tonight.

"For so long, I have dreaded the thought of eternity." His fingers continue their dance, skipping over her knee and back down her thigh to her hip and up her side. "And now it hardly seems enough time." He would spend a million forevers with her and it would only just begin to make up for they time they've spent apart.

His lips mirror the movement of his fingers, dancing over her jaw, smiling into her throat.

He’s welcome to watch her classes and workshops, rehearsals and performances. She’d love it if he did. But she won’t ask him to plaster himself to her side and ignore his own wants and the life he’s already built to cater to the one she’s made. There is love, and there is obsession. They have love.

“Poetry has ever fallen from your lips,” she murmurs, her breath catching at the delicate touch of fingers on skin, a soft sound of approval following it as his mouth wanders over her throat. “Song or words, you move me...”

"I should hope not just song and words." He smiles into her skin the backs of his fingers brushing over the swell of her breast. She's been up since dawn and so has he, but he's not ready to close his eyes on this just yet. "I hope to move you in many, many ways yet."

He presses his lips to her pulse to feel the beat of her heart before lifting his head to smile down at her. "But if you need sleep, my love, I'll hold you till morning."

“Not just those,” she confirms with a soft sigh as his hands and mouth continue their slow path over her skin. “They’re just the ones that were valid right in that very moment. I promise there are others in an ever-changing array of things you do that move me.”

Green eyes blink sleepily at him, but...

“I think I can manage to stay awake for you for a little longer. You’re only the love of my life.”

Well, then, there will be more kisses, across her forehead, down the bridge of her nose, along her cheekbones. "I appreciate the great sacrifice you make for me," he says, lips curling upward against the line of her jaw. "And I will still appreciate it when you fall asleep in my arms, so long as you wake up in them as well."

The old fear, that this is a dream, a hallucination, creeps in at the edges, but he would know. He knows what she feels like in his arms, and no dream was ever so vivid.

Soft laughter follows his kisses, their delicate playfulness demanding it.

“Such a prince among men,” she grins, and twines her body around him further, muffling a yawn in his shoulder.

“You’ll wake me to greet the dawn?”

Her window faces east.

Edited 2019-03-28 02:41 (UTC)

"I will. Tomorrow and every day." His hymn to Apollo tomorrow will be something to behold. "Shall I sing you to sleep, my love?"

Will you let me? is what he means. He wants to ease her into rest, even if it won't take much.

The Drowning Fiddler

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

Ree and Orpheus hit Burning Man...

They’ll bring a whole new meaning to interactive performance art...

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

(no subject)

(no subject)

(no subject)

(no subject)