Dinner was in pieces. Stranded in the béarnaise sauce, congealed and milky thick. Gone cold in it’s own drippings of myoglobin and fat. Orion’s gaze tracked Faron out the glass door, into the gardens where Calina lingered in the rain. He could barely see them in the diluted, late afternoon lighting. And it was difficult to hear the conversation beneath the layer of pattering rain.
Lightning flashed, illuminating Faron’s hand, the slide of fingers on the inside of Calina’s wrist. Orion pressed his tongue into his left cheek and reached for the wine.
No alcohol with medication, Signor Massetti.
Orion filled the glass half-way. Regarded it with a tip of his head, before decidedly sloshing it to the brim. He needed it, and perhaps one more, to navigate this place–Calina’s home. Or was it Faron’s? Both? Everywhere he turned there was history. Shared bedrooms, morning rituals, old habits. And Orion seemed to knock his elbows into their intimacy, taking up too much space in rooms accustomed to two.
Perhaps he should feel guilty for unaccommodating them.
He took another sip of wine.
They’d made the decision of wheeling him into their domestic space. And while he’d enjoyed (to an extent) the doting attention of Calina and Faron’s amiable tolerance–tomorrow. It would have to be tomorrow. He’d endured the role of invalid long enough.
Neither of them had asked why. About the bullet. About the uncharacteristic sentimentality. And Orion was relieved. If they did, he’d answer–all the wrong reasons.
Wrist slipping from his grasp, for fingers to catch on his and drift away just as quickly. “You know I hate soup.” The crinkle of her nose and the way she walks backwards for just a moment as she dances away from his grip, eyes on him, should lend some lightness to the picture. Nudge away at the weight of how she tensed. She tensed. Hopes he wont have realised, wont have questioned it the way that she did. Thinks there was a crack of thunder and a flash of lightning just before it happened, maybe enough to draw attention away, maybe enough of an excuse. Maybe she imagined it.
“Besides it’s you who needs to stay healthy.”
Turns before she reaches the door for a reprieve. Expression obscured to both potential witnesses by the angle or the distance, the way she dips her head and twists at her hair to allow just one moment more for herself.
Had no intention of returning to their atmosphere so soon. Except her hand is on the door handle and she’s slipped out of her shoes, pressed her barefeet into the room. It should only be polite to speak, but the things she thinks to say are far from it. So she says nothing as her gaze drifts to the wine on the table and not the man before it. Nothing as she searches through the cupboard to withdraw with a bottle of vodka.
Finally speaks as she looks at Orion, “If everyone’s drinking.” doesn’t look away as she pours the alcohol into a wine glass. It fills past the brim but is only as dramatic as the way she hovers over the table, rainwater dripping onto the surface to make the other liquid seem a more natural addition.
He’s smiling, still. Fondness open in his expression, a low laugh in reply to her words as she turns away. But there’s--
A slow sense of disquiet. And he lingers- a moment more than he would have- in the rain, gazing at the slope of her shoulders, the rain dripping from her fingertips. The sound of thunder, rumbling in the sky.
He shuts the door behind him when he goes in.
“If everyone is drinking,” Faron echoes, eyeing her choice to pair the remains of dinner with vodka. He sighs, moving behind Orion, dramatic exasperation in the manner he shakes his head. “See what I have to deal with, котенок.”
Sliding a palm over Orion’s hand and plucking his glass from him, taking a sip of the man’s wine. His own glass still half-full on the other side of the table. Still- it wouldn’t do to have Orion’s nurses unhappy with him again. All the while his gaze following Calina as she over pours the vodka, decidedly unimpressed by the alcohol mingling with rainwater on the table. More the rainwater. “Любовью.”
He tilts his head back and leaves the wine glass mostly empty on the table. Disappears into the downstairs bathroom to reappear with a towel. “Sit,” and then- “You’re dripping all over the hardwood.”
His palms find her shoulders, setting her down in a chair as he starts rubbing her hair dry. “You’ll be on a soup diet if you catch a cold. The price to pay for getting sick.”
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