#i'm the flakiest flake and i'm deeply sorry for how flaky i am lmao

[fashionkingcarney]

ravenous, ravenous

one | two

When he looks up and spots her, standing paces away, his whole face lights up. “Eurydice,” he says, breathy and hopeful, and damn him for how her name sounds in his voice.

Home, he'd promised her.

“Eurydice,” he says gently, prying her hands off his shoulders and clutching her fingers. “Do you want this with me?” 

chapter two - read here on AO3

The lock on Orpheus’s door is rusted over. He fumbles through his pockets with one hand, dropping crumpled scraps of notepad paper on the dusty floor, apologizing with every breath. Still, he holds her hand tight, as if she might make a break for it if he lets go. Even as he struggles, reaching crosswise to his left pocket, he refuses to release her.

“Hold on a second,” she tells him, swallowing the ridiculous giggle that bubbles up in her gut.  

With her free hand, she reaches into his pocket, digging through the copious amounts of crumpled newsprint, until she finds something cold and metallic, with teeth on the end. It’s a skeleton key tied to a length of torn red cloth, frayed along the edges.

“You can open it,” he offers, “If you’d like.”

A door for her to open; Eurydice can’t remember the last time she’d had one of those. She fumbles with the key, using the end to push aside the flap. She jams it in the wrong way on her first try, the metal creaking angrily in protest. She turns it to try again, the end of the key scratching hideously against the surface of the lock. It takes try after try, of turning the key clockwise and then counter-clockwise, and then back again. Orpheus is entirely unhelpful, holding her left hand sandwiched between both of his, when she pulls her right out of his grip.

Finally, a wiggle and a twist to the right and the pins click. The doorknob turns and the hinges on the door groan as the door swings open. He beams down at her, eyes alight.

Eurydice swallows another ridiculous giggle.

Orpheus’s apartment, a second floor walk up on top of the liquor store, is little more than four walls and a roof. The door opens to empty space, a kitchen and what must be a dining area with a makeshift table; a piece of plywood over a rusted metal frame, and a single stool. There’s a trio of chairs lined up one side, each with a bent leg or a slanted wooden seat or a contorted backrest. Scavenged furnishings and do-it-yourself projects; she isn’t surprised. She’d expected as much, when he’d offered her that paper flower.

And still; it’s four walls more than she’d had, wandering the streets.

“Well?” she slips off her coat and hugs it to her chest, setting her bag down at her feet. “What can I do?”

“I can take your coat,” he offers, taking it from her and draping it over a hook on the barren tree in the foyer. “Do you want some tea? Lady Persephone left me some from her hibiscus garden, before she left for the winter.”

“Orpheus.” Six steps and she’s crossed the room to where he is. She curls her hands around the leather straps of his suspenders and yanks him close. Until he’s standing flush against her, so close she can feel the thrum of his heart. “You wanted me to come home with you.”

He swallows. “Yes. Yes I did.”

“Well then, lover,” she purrs, “What do you want me to do?”

“I…I don’t know,” he stutters.

“What about this?” she leans up on tiptoes and presses her mouth to his jaw.

His breath hitches. “Is this what you want to do?”

“That’s not important,” she takes him by the hand, leads him to the rightmost chair. It creaks when he sits, the legs teetering like a seesaw when she gently pushes him down with her hands on his shoulders, standing between his legs. “You brought me home. Tell me what you like.”

“Eurydice,” he chokes out. “I didn’t ask you to come home with me because I wanted this.”

Her grip on his shoulders tighten. “Well why did you, then?”

He looks down at his hands. “To talk to you, I guess. I just feel like I need to know you.”

Need; she could scoff. How fanciful a life did he lead if he had the luxury of using need in the context of this? A musician with his head in the clouds, by the state of his apartment, she should’ve guessed his grasp of the reality of this broken world to be less than practical.

“You want to know me,” she corrects. “Need is something else, lover. Let me show you.”

“Eurydice,” he says gently, prying her hands off his shoulders and clutching her fingers. “Do you want this with me?”

“You’re giving me a choice?” She chokes on a laugh. “There is none. Not for a thing like me.”

“What do you want from me, then? What did you want with me?” he swallows. “You came back, you said you wanted to come home with me. Why?”

That she’d been cold and hungry, and he’d seemed decent enough that she might offer herself to him to solve one of those problems—she can’t explain that to him. He, who doesn’t understand the difference between need and want, or perhaps just places want before need. The wants of his mind over the needs of his body. She’d resigned herself to bartering her flesh. Her body for a place to sleep, it’d seemed reasonable. But it’s her he wants and not the physical of what she’s willing to trade. She’s not for sale. She’d come to him as her last resort, but she’d sooner freeze than barter her soul.

Eurydice can’t stay.

She picks up her bag, heaving it up over her shoulder, wincing as the strap bears down on that line of muscle in her back that’s ready to give out. “This was a mistake. I should go. I’m going to go.”

“I’m sorry,” he says in a rush, “If it’s something I’ve said or done, please, I’m sorry. You don’t have to go.”

“Look, I’m offering you sex and only that,” she squints at him. “But that’s not what you want, is it?”

He runs his fingers up his hair, mussing it even more. “Where will you go?”

What he doesn’t say: he doesn’t want sex, if it’s something she’s offering for trade.

She could laugh at his privilege.

“I’ll figure something out.” She picks her coat off the hook he’d draped it on. “Goodbye, Orpheus.”

The door closes gently behind her. She’ll find a way. She’ll have to.

  The doors to the train station close at eight in the evening, but there’s no lock on the door. Just a deadbolt on the outside that slips open with a tug at the latch. The lights are turned off, and the heating system’s creaky old pipes that had whined all day are silent. Eurydice exhales in a huff of frost. The place hadn’t been inviting in the light of day, but in the dark of night, it’s downright haunted.

There are slabs of wood on concrete blocks serving as benches, placed intermittently along the station’s walls. Glass panes form the exterior walls, and the black sealant is broken in places. Day had brought a touch of warmth, the furnace heating the space, but the nights are colder and with the heating powered down, the chill creeps through the cracks.

Eurydice picks the bench farthest from the windows and sets her bag down. Months ago, she’d had bedding, a roll of blankets with a pillow sandwiched in the hollow. No bed of feathers, but something to lie on, something to cover her legs. That’s gone now, lost on a train somewhere in the Midwest. All that remains are the clothes off her back. The wool on her coat unravels in tufts, the silk slip she’d repurposed into a dress offers no warmth. Her stockings have runs, where they’d caught on hooks and nails, gauging the skin underneath. She’d bled and then healed, the torn flesh scabbing and then scarring, but the wounds to the delicate nylon weren’t so easily healed.

Her coat is her blanket, her bag, a pillow. She clutches it to her stomach, curling her legs up and around all her worldly possessions. Eurydice yawns, wincing as the movement sends a fresh wave of pain through her stomach; she’d journeyed so far and so long, and all for this. A bench in a train station and a worthless three quarters to her name. She’d slept sitting up on dirty hay, dozed off while standing, holding onto a railing inside a train car. There’d been a rhyme and a reason to that struggle then, she’d given up her feather bed for—honour. There’s no honour to being homeless in the winter; pride will neither feed her, nor provide her shelter.

Fatigue pulls her under now, she drifts, her eyes heavy.

But the wind picks up, the building rattles. Something tugs at her bag and she jerks awake, clutching the coarse canvas satchel so tightly her knuckles turn white. The door to the place had opened easily for her, it would be just as easy for someone else to come in take all she has. A meagre nothing, but her nothing all the same.

And though the day—the days—had been interminably long, her eyes stay glued to the horizon as the morning light bleeds through the night.

She can’t do this again.

#hadestown fic #orpheus #eurydice #hadestown #orphydice fic #i'm the flakiest flake and i'm deeply sorry for how flaky i am lmao #i figured the tag could use a lil rejuvenation today given the strange other that popped in there #but srsly someone slap me and force me to write #update is also under the read more