closed starter for @gwyndolence
How was it that he always ended up alone?
It was a feeling Roland really should have been used to after all this time and yet, somehow, every single time it happened it was just as painful if not more so. Oh, Rhys hadn't exactly dumped him but given that the witch had relocated to London for the foreseeable future and more or less forbade Roland from joining him due to family and coven complications, it basically amounted to the same thing. They weren't broken up but given the circumstances they weren't really together, either, so it was like they were on pause. Roland hadn't wanted that but no matter how much he'd argued or pleaded, that was the result. He couldn't hold Rhys at the end of the day anymore or see his smile on a frequent basis.
Effectively, Roland was alone.
He ached, fiercely missing Rhys already. In spite of all his practice, Roland wasn't actually very good at being alone, the last thirty or so years being the exception. That had been before this new love, when he'd more or less resigned himself to not risking his heart again and enjoying everything else life had to offer. He should've known he wouldn't have been able to stick to that and now here he was.
Roland had been at the piano in his suite for hours. He wore a dress shirt, waistcoat and jacket long since carelessly discarded, sleeves rolled up. First, the pieces he'd played were angry, discordant, venting his frustration. Inevitably, however, he'd drifted into the melancholic, the haunting, and sad. He'd done some Scriabin and Ravel and was just near the beginning of Chopin's Prelude in E Minor when he caught the sound of someone skulking about his suite near the balcony doors. While normally he might have reacted more strongly to an intruder, he was too lost in emotion and music to bother at the moment. Roland didn't even turn from the piano or stop playing as he spoke, quiet but firm and clear.
"Whoever you are, go away. I'm not in the mood."