Six Months with Irene | ✓

//ORION//36

After that, Orion had wanted to do nothing more than throw his phone across the room and start destroying things. But he had somewhere to be, and he was too tired to worry about having to pay for a new phone if he broke his--not to mention whatever else he might have broken in his fit.

So, he'd hopped in the shower, washed the stench of fish and river and sweat from his skin and hair, brushed his teeth and pulled on a fresh t-shirt and basketball shorts, not caring that he didn't look particularly awake or ready to face the world again.

When he got to the coffee shop, no one commented on his appearance, already too familiar with it to question.

And now he watched as Irene softly beat out the background for 'Stone Shore', so quiet that it blended in with the melody Karen was playing on her keyboard, the two instruments seamlessly merging into one tune. If it wasn't for the heavy, hot mug of coffee in his hands, Orion would have been asleep already.

As it was, he managed to keep his eyes open enough that he could watch her face as she played; she was so intensely focused, not seeing the world around her, but the world that she wanted to be in--her dark brows furrowed and her hair fell over her shoulders and covered half of her face, her mouth was set in a straight line, and to people not paying attention she may have looked angry--but if you were really watching her, like he was, you could see how passionate she was about the song in the way that she moved; in the gentle but firm motions of her arms, guiding the drumsticks where they needed to go. You could see it in the way that her head dropped a little in the softer beats, and the way her eyes fluttered closed in the more intricate parts.

He smiled at how purely /alive/ she looked in that moment--how alive she looked every time he'd seen her play so far. It was almost like she became a different person, and Orion suspected that it was as close to the girl she'd been before Rico died that she would ever be again.

Since that kiss in her bedroom, neither of them had brought up anything about a relationship, and they hadn't kissed again. There had been occasions when they were sitting at La Cocina together (now that Irene was in the band, she was fully a part of his friend group, and so coaxing her to join them at the local Mexican restaurant was not nearly so hard as it had been before) that Orion or Irene one would grab the other's hand. Usually it just kind of happened; like neither of them seemed to quite realize what they were doing until suddenly their fingers were interlaced and resting on the seat between them--or on Orion or Irene's leg if they were sharing a booth with one of the guys.

That didn't mean that Orion hadn't /wanted/ to kiss her though. There had been plenty of times: sitting on her couch waiting for Selene to get home, neither of them having the distraction of homework; weekends out with everyone where they'd go up to Providence and spend a day in the arcade and Irene would get pissed off at Galaga and Pac-Man; after band practices when she was so happy and full of life from the music she'd been playing.

But every time that he wanted to kiss her, and every time that he nearly did, there was something in the back of his mind that was holding him back. It was this little whisper that reminded him that the whole reason that he was with Irene was because she was deciding whether or not to kill herself and he still had no answer. At this point, it was hard for him to think that she'd still want to take her life, but he knew that it could still be a possibility; almost five months ago, she had given him a deadline of August to make her change her mind about it, to make her stay on the Earth. And here it was, the last week of June, and he still had a month and a half before he got an answer.

And it was setting him on the very edge of a cliff that he really did not want to fall over.

"Alright guys, let's call break and eat!" Sean called out as they finished the song, setting his acoustic down and hopping off the stage. He nodded a greeting to Orion, which Orion returned, and walked over to the counter where Carson was stacking individually wrapped cookies in a pyramid formation.