RORY
i told the stars about you
It took a while—half the conversation was in the movement of their blue eyes, the different types of silence that hung between the words. This particular one was half fear, half contemplation, and Rory's heart counted the seconds. Words weren't his strong suit (unless he was inciting mobs, apparently) and if these weren't enough..? He could elaborate, he could expand, but at its core, it was what he had said, and no amount of dressing up could change the truth.And if Deimos didn't want anything to do with him, then, well...
His heart kept on counting.
“I am not hurt,” Deimos finally said, and Rory felt the breath leave him in a long, slow sigh: it was the kind of sigh that happened when you realized you'd held your breath but didn't want the other party to notice. (He was pretty sure Deimos noticed. Deimos seemed very alert.) Words pooled on the tip of his tongue, that's a relief or thank Safrin, but they got tangled up in each other, sticking to the back of his teeth. In the end he said nothing, though the relief was visible in his eyes, and it was strange, really; who was Deimos to him? A maybe-friend with a connection to his not-blood sister?
Maybe it was just the confrontation talking, the release of tension, but some very distant part of him felt giddy with it—and with the almost-smile, oddly charmed, like he had been at the bakery. "That's very true," he responded quietly, once again uncertain; that silence, now half relief, half contemplation, and he let it linger.
He felt those glacial eyes wander back to him, and raised his own in response. "Of course," and it was true, in more ways than merely the fact that Jigano, an Outlander himself, had urged caution and research. Rory raised one hand to scratch between his feathery braids.
And again his little coup was called a riot. Rory winced slightly, his face pulling into a grimace, though he filed the wording away for later, burying his questions for a better time. Honestly, was it so strange to hear those words, coming from such a man as Deimos? His demeanor, his attention, his eyes, his garb—it all hissed of violence.
"Is it still a riot if no one got hurt?" he mused, though perhaps it was time to accept it for what it would be remembered as: a riot (a concept he knew of merely because his ancestors had been locked away with the memory of it). Rory, instigator of riots—he gave his head a small shake.
You aren't always who you think you are.
