sandandwater | [RP for Rory] There's Static On the Line...

Current Mood: nervous
Current Location: Alessandro's studio-Venice

Entry tags:

[RP for Rory] There's Static On the Line...

takes place well into the second week of January

She needed a break from the oppressive heat in Alessandro's glassworks studio, needed a drink of water and to wipe the sweat from her brow. She also wiped at the back of her neck and the small of her back. Moisture gathered everywhere it could pool as she worked and it didn't bother her until she stopped long enough to break her concentration. Now it positively itched.

Carrying her towel and a bottle of water outside with her, Pippa sat on a low stone bench and leaned against the building's exterior. Several days ago she'd had a conversation with one of her friends over the internet and since then she'd been having an internal debate over one sticking point: should she call Rory?

Today it seemed as if Pippa had had enough of her internal debate. She was going to call Rory. Just once. And if she got his voicemail, she'd leave him a message.

Her new phone, already filled with numbers and contact information, was missing an entry for the Irishman--not that it mattered. Pippa knew his numbers, his address, his email by heart. Without much thought, her fingers danced over the keypad, entering the digits for his cell phone.

As it rang in her ear, Pippa nodded at a passerby and offered a soft greeting in Italian. Hello, good afternoon.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Rory had actually stolen an day to indulge a passion he knew he'd have less and less time for as the CD release neared. Showing up at the Murphy stables, he'd volunteered himself to exercise a couple of their riding horses. Old Colm Murphy had welcomed the "young man" (whom he knew full well was older than himself) with raised eyebrows and a half-smile before bringing out one of his beautiful Morgans for Rory to ride.

He'd saddled up the beast and taken off for the nearby hills, where he was now giving both the mare and himself a proper workout. Communing with the pretty girl, feeling her response to his unspoken commands and her joy in stretching her legs, Rory felt the tensions and regrets and wonderings fall away from him, letting him just be for a while.

When he felt his cell phone vibrate against his hip, he sighed and reined in. Phone calls like this were why he wasn't taking off for a run in Faerie in stallion form, but the interruption still grated. Checking his phone, though, he saw the call wasn't from one of the band or anyone at Serptichore. In fact it wasn't a US number at all.

Brow furrowed in sudden uncertainty (tinged with both hope and trepidation), he answered. "Hello, Rory Stone here."

Her breath hitched a moment as the call was answered and then she smiled at the sound of his voice. Just hearing him speak felt good with the way his deep, lilting words caressed her ear. Her reply was soft, carried on a breath that still held her easy smile, "Hi, Ro..."

"Pippa." It was true. It was her. His stomach lurched at the same time his heartrate accelerated. "Hi."

He felt awkward. He felt elated. He felt wary. Quickly he dismounted before his growing unrest could transmit itself to the horse underneath him. "How ... how are you?"

"I'm..." She started to tell him she was fine, but if that were true she wouldn't be calling him, would she? And his halting speech didn't go unnoticed by her either. Did he want to hear from her? She couldn't quite tell.

Trying again and striving to keep her voice steady, Pippa studied the stone walkway under her feet and then the canal beyond. "I was thinking about you. I just wanted to hear your voice. I won't keep you, you sound distracted."

There, let him tell her he wanted to talk.

Rory's eyes drifted shut as Pippa's words went through him like an exquisitely sharp blade, or a single high, pure note. Both. She missed him.

Placing a hand on the horse's withers for support, he tilted his head back and searched the sky for something to say. "Not distracted," he husked at last. "Just surprised." Swallowing hard, he summoned the truth. "It's good to hear your voice too."

Agonizing, unnerving, exalted ... good.

Now that she had him on the phone it was hard to think of what to actually say to him. It wasn't from lack of words, no there was not a dearth of things to say--quite the opposite. How to choose? Pippa listened to him breathe, tried to picture how he might look at that moment, the expression on his face based on the tone of his voice, the emotion she could hear when he spoke.

What came to mind made her eyes sting and she closed them against the threat of tears. "I wasn't really sure if I should call or not. I'm so used to--well, it's hard to get used to not doing that, you know?"

She wasn't doing so well at keeping the tears from causing her throat to close, her voice to thicken. "Anyway...I've snuck out of the studio to take a break, I can't feel my fingers right now, I've been turning pontils since before dawn."

She babbled at him a bit, Alessandro was forcing her to do the work of a novice. the first couple of hours she spent working with empty rods, just turning them and keeping them level. Getting a feel for the metal, absent from her hands for far too long. Now she was loading the melt for other blowers, nothing more, but it was demanding and exacting work none the less. She would be sore in the morning.

"Ro...?" She stopped and asked him a wordless question, her uncertainty evident. She wanted to know if she could talk about things less banal.

He found a nearby rock to sit on, chilled though it was, and listened. His eyes shut again as he drank in Pippa's words and imagined her face. Though the unsettled feeling in his gut made him wonder if this was a good idea, still he was glad to hear that she was fighting to reclaim the art that meant so much to her. He couldn't be the artist he was and not feel that gladness, overwhelming the small stab of jealousy that came with it.

When she said his name, her voice soft and hesitant, Rory opened his eyes, reaching out a hand to stroke the muzzle of the curious mare. "What is it, sweet?" The endearment left his lips before he could decide whether or not it should, pulled out of him by ... habit? Hope? Something.

Edited 2009-01-05 21:22 (UTC)

Pippa bent forward, elbow on knee and hand pressed against her brow as squeezed her eyes shut again, this time feeling hot tears trailing down her cheeks and dropping onto the denim that covered her thighs. Sweet. He spoke to her like she was still his. What had she done?

What was she doing?

"I'm so sorry, Ro. I...I don't even know what I want." No, she couldn't pretend things were fine. She might be able to tell everyone else that she was good, had made the right choice, but it was so much harder to lie to him. "I miss you." That last came out on a whispered breath.

I miss you. Rory felt like something grabbed him around the gut and squeezed hard. He could hear the tears in Pippa's voice even as his own eyes stung.

"I miss you too, Pippa," he said softly, "but--" But. Why in seven hells did there have to be a but? He took a slow breath and tried again. "What you're doing in Venice is so very important. I do understand that ... I do."

Well. Most of him did. The grown-up most of him that knew how to put a loved one's well-being ahead of his own wants. He couldn't deny that there was a needy little boy deep inside that wanted to beg her to come home, but he could avoid dumping that kind of selfishness on Pippa. Could and would, he kept telling himself.

But...but he didn't want her to come back. That's what Pippa heard as she hastily wiped at her face with the back of her hand. Done is done and you can't go back.

"Do you?" Did he really understand why she'd gone halfway around the world to cope with the trauma inflicted on her? Did he realize she wasn't there solely for the glass or that it was a means to an end? Her art was the way she balanced herself, expressed the things she would otherwise never admit to aloud. Did he know that she was afraid of him--not all of him, but the part she'd never imagine existed. Did Rory know that's why she left and could he really understand?

Or that she loved him despite her fear? Loved him even if he didn't want her back.

"I'm trying to." Rory swallowed hard, his free arm wrapped around one knee. "I know ... that you wouldn't have left on a whim."

No good. This was coming out stiff and stilted and self-conscious. But to say something more genuine meant making himself more vulnerable. Honesty. God, try to keep it honest, even if it tears you up.

"I love you, Pippa." His voice, normally so smoothly modulated, sounded ragged around the edges. "But as badly as I want you here, I know you weren't happy. I want you to find your happiness again."

"Oh, Ro." She could hear the rough emotion in his voice and it matched the gut wrenching ache she felt deep inside. "I love you, too," Pippa wasn't just echoing his words with the expected response, she meant it. She loved him.

"Happy? I'd settle for not miserable. Not suffocating. Not scared." She stopped then, sitting up straight and taking a deep breath. It was oddly far less intimidating to tell him this now, away from him. "Maybe other people could handle what happened and move on, I don't know. Somewhere along the way I stopped feeling like me and I can't live like that. I tried and it only made things worse. I did try, Ro."

She paused, worried her bottom lip between her teeth. "I'm sorry I didn't tell you I was leaving. I thought it would be easier to just go."

The chill of the stone underneath him was working its way into Rory's body. "I know you tried, Pippa," he husked. "I saw how hard you were trying." He got up and slid an arm over the withers of the patient mare, leaning against her for warmth.

"And maybe there just wasn't a way to make it easier, for either of us. Too much hurting ..." He felt his throat constricting again. "Sometimes all you can do is go on. In whatever way you can."

Was he telling her this was it for them? Isn't that what she'd thought when she left and why did it hurt more now, hearing it come from him? Pippa shook her head slowly, no. She wasn't going to guess at double meanings and what he might not be saying.

"Would you rather I not call again, Ro?"

Rory stiffened against the mare's side, causing her to look around enquiringly. He forced himself to consider the question as seriously as she'd asked it and not just dismiss it out of hand. As bitterly awkward as this conversation was, would he really prefer to never hear her voice again?

His eyes shut tight against the thought. "I would ... not rather that," he finally replied. "I would very much not rather that." A deep, shuddering breath. "But I only want you calling me if you truly want to, Pippa." Not out of any sense of guilt or obligation. Never that.

Pippa stood up and paced the length of the bench she'd been sitting on, back and forth. What he wanted, what she wanted. What both of them needed. Why was it so hard to put a name to these things, where they really so intangible--unobtainable? She shook her head and answered him quietly, "I called you this evening didn't I? Morning, I suppose, for you." Time differences, she reminded herself. They may as well be in different worlds.

"You...you know you can call me too, Ro. If...if you ever wanted to, you don't have to, of course." She ran her hand through her hair, felt how sweat had caused it to clump together and sighed at the thought of going back inside to the furnaces. Pippa swallowed then, hard. "I want you to be happy, Ro. I want you to do what would make you happiest."

She wanted to fix everything that was wrong between them, all that was broken within herself, and for that to make him happy.

He exhaled, long and slow, rubbing absently at the mare's neck. "I want that for you too, sweet." The endearment was a shade more deliberate this time. "That's exactly what I want for you."

Logistics intrude momentarily, and Rory glanced at the number from which Pippa's call originated. "Is the number you called from the one I should use to call you back?"

If only it were that easy. She leaned against the building and placed a foot on the edge of the bench. "I'm trying to figure out how to do that, what that would be."

Number? Oh...Pippa nodded then reminded herself that he couldn't see the action. "You can call this number, yes. Or Alessandro's. I'm staying there while I'm in Venezia. Lola doesn't speak English but if you just tell her 'Phillipa' she'll understand." Lola being the sometime housekeeper/sometime task master that kept the glass artist on his toes. She was also probably close to Rory's age even though perfectly human.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

[RP for Rory] There's Static On the Line...

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