0100 hours. Virgil's bedroom. Mature for references to sexual content.


"Post-fuck joint?"

Laying on his bed, stomach down and elbows propping him up, Virgil reached out to tap the ash off his joint in the bottlecap ashtray on the bedside table. The room was dark save for a weak lamp by the dressing table - it threw gentle illumination over their clothes on the floor, the smoke in the air, a white cat hiding under the wardrobe. His duvet was redolent of sweat, musk, and corrupted perfume. Everything felt wonderfully warm and sticky in this refuge against a January winter.

After a night out clubbing, he and Waverly had retreated back to Diagon for a little fun. In spite of their little snag with Muse earlier this month, she was still the best person to hang with when it came to London nightlife.

You never had to keep an eye on Wav, she took care of herself and she knew how to have a good time. She'd go around selling some gillyweed, doing her own thing, dance a few rounds, take a few shots. And he could dance to his heart's content, knowing she was there.

Virgil glanced over his shoulder at the dark-skinned witch, cradled by crumpled bedsheets and looking entirely out of his league. He handed over the joint with a soft smile and languidly enjoyed the strange sense of safety he always felt when he slept with a witch. Not because they were nicer or softer in bed (they weren't, fortunately) but because it never felt like they were scrutinising him, or demanding something impossible.

It was simple, it felt simple. Wizards weren't simple. Wizards frightened Virgil a little bit, when it came to doing the sacred deed. "So," he pushed those thoughts away, knowing he still wanted to face them down in The Closet one of these days, "what have you been up to lately anyway?"

Waverly had always been curious about Virgil, but she'd kept it to herself. He'd never seemed game. She liked the way they were together, no strings or expectations. They could be near each other without being close. It was almost anonymous, their disinterested trust. Friends without benefits. But she'd always been curious, and she'd not been disappointed. He'd been clever, she'd tried to be funny. She liked that he looked at her like that. And now, after, she was happy that she didn't feel any differently about him at all. A sacred and delicate thing, this thing.

She was past modesty now and his room was as warm as skin. Waverly sat up to reach the joint better, not bothering to bring up the sheet. She took a puff.

"You wouldn't like it," she said and lifting her sweaty curls off her neck. She'd had a busy week. Things were coming together. She was high as a kite and flush with cash and not from the gillyweed. Virgil hadn't approved of Muse; he'd called danger.[1] She'd ignored the warning.

"Saw Nicholas out last week-ish." Uncommitted attempt to change the subject. She didn't want to fight. Although if that were really true, she'd have just lied to him.

1.	16 Jan 2012 - That Lifting Sensation

His eyes followed her movements as she emerged from the sheets to take the gillyweed, all bare shoulders and taut curves. There was softness in how Waverly looked but not in how she behaved - it balanced the witch, somehow, precariously. Virgil found her pleasing in the way you would enjoy an especially clever melody or a well written song.

            "You wouldn't like it," she replied and he sighed softly.

No, perhaps he wouldn't. Not if she was dealing Muse. She hadn't been tonight but he supposed that might have been out of consideration of his feelings. Virgil rolled over to his side and looked up at her searchingly. Nicholas. He resisted the urge to glance over his shoulder at the door, past which his housemates might be chilling on a Saturday night.

"I'm sure you two had a wonderful time," the blonde murmured dryly, unimpressed. "He did mention, though not by name."

And Virgil would never reveal Waverly as his Muse source, not even to Nick. Whoever was giving her the stuff, they probably weren't good people. He didn't want her in trouble with them just as much as he didn't want her mixed up with the law, either. She was just out for a good time, right? Couldn't last forever.

A part of him wanted to warn her again, another part was sure that Wav would leave it all behind her eventually. Before it got serious. "Nick is easy pickings, isn't he?" Virgil tried to veer away from the drug aspect of their exchange as well, reaching out for the joint. "Never thinks twice about these things, drinks to forget."

Still dazed and amorous, Waverly felt that pull to Virgil's sleepy eyes with the dark circles. She considered, briefly, another shag, which was more interesting than talking about his roommate. Muse was a known sore topic, but she thought he and Nicholas got on. Apparently not. Bit irritating.

'Easy pickings.' She couldn't tell if Virgil was referencing Nicholas's interest in mind-altering potions, that he was a sure bet as a customer. Nicky must have said something. Not a pain in the arse on its own, he'd just told the wrong person. Virgil and Waverly could both fall on the judgey side, but what she felt from him about Muse was closer to concern. She liked the judgement better. In addition to his collarbones.

She took another draw before handing Virgil the joint.

"We did have a good time," she confirmed with a bit of snip. Nick went looking for trouble, and often found it. He was always riding the line, but skittish at the same time. He could be tiring, he'd settled for the Ministry, but he was still fun when he wasn't attached to Peyton. Waverly moved to the end of the bed and found her top. It was a loose black tee entirely dominated by a black cat's yawning/yelling maw. She saw her wand sticking out of her boot.

"I heard you were dating a muggle," she said, remembering. She pulled the shirt over her head and grinned teasingly at him. Waverly had been too cool for the New Years' party, but Gabby was gone. Her statement and expression suggested a question.

            "I heard you were dating a muggle."

He pushed himself to sit up, only to languidly lean against the shelf behind him as he took another long drag from the joint. Word got around rather quickly in the post-Hogwarts grapevine - not that he had been trying to hide his liaisons with Anton. Virgil pursed his lip and blew a shaky little smoke ring in Waverly's direction.

"I was," his answer came in a thoughtful, effete voice, "but it was casual, and it's off[1] for now."

It had been fun. There was something both reckless and reassuring about sleeping with a muggle; on one hand, it was unusual for a wizard to do so. On the other, he never felt like he was in any actual danger with Anton. Perhaps it wasn't clever of him to underestimate the magicless in such a way. Still, there was more to it than that. Anton was a genuinely good person with good, light-hearted intentions.

"He's a nice bloke," Virgil continued speak through the haze in his mind, trailing a finger up and down his bare thigh as he watched Wav dress. "Just wasn't feeling it I suppose," his sleepy mouth twisted into a little smile, and he giggled. "Thought I'd slut it up and see what's out there, you know? Before I got bored."

Oh, he was so sick of taking precautions with everything.

And after his talk with Yavin earlier in the week, putting into words out loud what he'd been thinking for so long, why not just do whatever he wanted?  Virgil wasn't about to go out on a bender every night but he could... have a good time. Explore. Let himself be explored.

1.	With permission from Mai!

Waverly shouldn't ever be surprised at Virgil's poetry and all its self-deprecation with an edge. Slut it up. Waverly had felt like quite the happy tart to manage a hook-up once in a blue moon; putting any more effort into finding partners sounded tiring. The smoke ring wavered in the air before breaking and dissolving.

"A muggle, though? Not a squib, a muggle muggle?"

The semantic satiation of the word always hit early. It was a terrible word and whoever had chosen it deserved a special punishment. It combined too many sounds associated with gagging and now she'd said it three times. She didn't hold anything against muggles other than the discomforts and restrictions of their own making. (They had very good cinema, though.)

Waverly pulled on her underwear, then got comfortable on the bed again. She leaned against the brick wall between the ice-cold windows. She held out her hand for the gillyweed.

"Sorry, I know I'm breezing past the lede, but - can I? Thanks." She took a turn at the gillyweed and handed it back. "How'd you even meet him? You didn't bring him back here, did you? Or you did but then had Bevans ...?"

She waved her finger like a wand and made a popping noise near her temple. Obviously, they didn't Obliviate Virgil's ex-boyfriend. That would be criminal in at least five ways. "I mean, was he tall...?"

He had completely forgotten about Slytherins and muggles. Virgil grew up amid muggle London, he didn't think much of it, and spending time with people like Abby and Fauna and Nick made it all seem even less remarkable. But Waverly was right to ask, he thought as he eyed her on the edge of his bed, at least when it came to the statute anyway.

           "You didn't bring him back... but then had Bevans ...? I mean, was he tall...?"

Virgil laughed, coughing out gillyweed smoke and shaking his head. "His sister's a muggleborn, Anton's in on the secret," he gestured vaguely at the window - at Diagon Alley, the streets and shops people like he and Wav had known their entire lives. Sometimes he wondered what it was like for muggleborns to see it for the first time.

He twirled the joint in his fingers idly, feeling the high behind his eyes. It made talking more... fluid. Less of a rigid affair. "One of Schlawkward's muggle mates, came out with us on a pub crawl. A good fuck. Awfully fun, outside of that."

This felt weird. Like leaving a review for boyfriends. Five out of five golden snitches! Would recommend! Not magic-proof.

"Here," he handed Waverly the gillyweed again and then reached for the leatherbound journal[1] on his bedside table, "I did some sketches." Virgil licked his thumb before flipping past the yellowed pages. His journal was filled with short entries in cross writing, sketches, recipes, pressed flowers, newspaper cuttings and the odd photograph.

He stopped at one of the more recent pages and turned the book around to show Waverly a couple of pencil sketches he'd done of the blonde muggle. Anton in bed, half-naked, reading. Anton sitting at a window in his Cambridge flat. All drawn with a light and thoughtful hand.

"He's handsome. Especially when he smiles," as if to punctuate this statement, Virgil smiled at the witch.

1.	Kindly Return to Virgil Carstairs - needs updating, I know!

They were telling just anybody now? The thought was bitter, but it did track. It would be hard for muggleborns to exist having to keep something so big from their families; Waverly didn't want that for them. It just felt like there were invaders in their midst, muggles running around laying magic boys and ogling. There was a reason their community was hidden. Muggles had a penchant for setting fires at witches' feet.

She took the journal. Her eyebrows lifted. She rifled the pages gently, but didn't stray from the page. She didn't know any actually kept sketchbooks like this. Her own school notes had always served as a disorganized repository, but nothing so deliberate and artistic as this. And she'd stopped the practice when note-taking had stopped being mandatory. It was impressive. Witchy, like a grimoire. The drawings were honest and there was skill. She couldn't make out if he was handsome, but from the marks she could tell Virgil though so.

"Nice bum," she said, curious to see what else was in there. She crossed her legs and set the open book in her lap. Everything about Virgil's space smelled nice.

But not Anton wasn't all muggles. Waverly reminded herself to trust Virgil when it came to Virgil. She'd want the same from him. She wanted the same from her parents, honestly. And after all, the wizard could read minds. Virgil smiled and Waverly smiled back, although she didn't hide her skepticism.

Telling him to be careful would feel foreign on her lips. She wasn't. Change the subject, W.

"I haven't seen Earnest," she said closing her eyes. She forced them open again. She didn't want to stay over. Breakfast seemed more intimate than she wanted to be. Seemed better just to stalk Virgil's dandy of a cousin.

Anton did have a nice arse. Nicer shoulders - and, fuck, those arms. That's the thing about blokes with strong arms, they always felt so fucking good when they slipped around your waist. Virgil hummed in agreement and reached over to pinch his journal by its corner, dragging it back to the top of the bed where he had sat up to mirror Waverly's pose.

He knew she wasn't staying the night, though it never mattered to himy if people did. But it would be nice to have the bed all to himself.

            "I haven't seen Earnest," the witch remarked.

This again. Earnest had that effect on women... like he was always looking for the next pretty thing to dump his dandy arse. Virgil liked his cousin but he wasn't always much in the way of intellectual conversation, or at least he pretended not to be.  Life as Solomon's son was probably easier if people thought you were shallow as a stream and thick as bricks.

"Why would you?" Virgil licked his lips into a smile. "He isn't your cousin. Not that I've seen him recently either," the blonde shrugged and thought back to his last memory of the other wizard. Probably at Christmas.

Every year the Carstairs did all see one another over Christmas hols, and then at least one more time at his mother's Oxford garden parties in the summer. He felt guilty for not keeping more in touch with his cousins, though.

Waverly coughed out a crude sort of giggle at Virgil's patient tolerance of her stupid crush on his older cousin. She knew what it was. She let her head fall against the wall, smiling and unashamed.

"I don't know." She shrugged. She didn't know how to run into him. That was the problem.

She looked at Virgil who only seemed to share nominal shared traits with his disaster-cousin. Self-contained, soft, not careful so much as private about his exploits. As she watched him, her brain made a few connections that she wasn't even conscious of. She'd seen a scar on his neck when she was kissing it, and Earnest being spotted at a vampire bar.

"I don't think I've seen that scar before. On your neck."

She leaned a little and squinted to see it better. There were two round marks just right of center. It looked like a vampire bite, if such a thing it could be. She sat back and looked at him sideways, now considering it might actually be true. She couldn't remember if indeed, she'd ever seen it before.

He felt her eyes and knew what she was going to say.

            "I don't think I've seen that scar before. On your neck."

Virgil, who had been idly tracing shapes against his naked thighs, slid a hand up his chest towards his neck and rubbed against where he knew Terry Hooker had left his mark. It had been a few weeks now since he stopped using a charm to hide it. Perhaps the vampire Vaillancourt[1] had been right all along. This belonged to Virgil now and he should not be ashamed of it.

"You probably weren't looking properly then, hm?" he replied, something soft and muted in his smile now. "How kind of you to notice now, though. There's a story behind it. If you want me to send you off with a bit of yarn, and then some."

The entertainer in him couldn't help it. And he would never name Nemo or anything specific to get people into trouble, but why not give Waverly a little tale? She was clearly hungry for it, if she was still going around dropping Muse and enjoying other people's memories.

"Earnest makes an appearance..." Virgil added in a sing-song voice, trailing off.

1.	8th Dec - Close Encounter of Another Kind

Any sleep evaporated and Waverly's characteristic air of disinterest shuddered. Virgil knew how to pull her strings, knew what she pursued. Damn him. The blatant implication of his teasing was that he'd been bitten by a vampire, too wild a think to happen. Too wild to be true, surely.

Waverly stared at him a moment, offended he was enticing her so deftly. She scoffed and lolled her head and stared again. Then she shrugged as if her response should be obvious.

"Well... yeah."

She turned and shifted her long legs under the sheets so she was more fully facing Virgil. The room was cooling off, and Wav more so near the windows. She put her fingernails to her mouth, itching for a cigarette which was the only way to sit at court.

He closed his eyes for a moment, collecting himself. Remembering. If he tried hard enough he could still recollect the smell of the place and the way the Soju had tasted when he downed it right after being bitten. This was therapeutic almost, to purposefully say out loud what had occurred as a part of his own narrative instead of.... an awful thing that happened to him.

"I went down to Hooker's, in Camden Town, with a friend." Virgil opened his eyes, blue and lucid, with only the slightly hint of the gillyweed they had smoked. "She went to pick up something she left behind before and while we were there, she crossed Hooker himself."

His hand closed on his own throat, softly. Something told him Terry Hooker didn't do anything softly. What incentive did he have? Virgil paused to consider that, and continued after he decided it didn't matter. "Anyway, the big bad vampire wagered a game of cards. Cup of blood each, or she'd get back what she left at the pub. We lost. Obviously."

He decided not to mention in detail that the night had been terrifying or that there was a point at which he didn't know if they were going to come out alive. Or undead.

Virgil dropped his hand and sighed, smile returning all at once to his wan face. "So that's the tale of the scar. Oh, right -" he laughed. "- Earnest was there? He was drinking absinthe, drunk off his head because he didn't even fucking clock me in the room. Was fiddling with the Wireless the whole time Hooker was leering at us."

Waverly was shocked. She didn't notice her hand had moved to her throat. It was true: Virgil had been bitten by a vampire, blood sucked out of him. Virgil was casual but she could see the telling of the story wasn't effortless. He smiled but damn, Waverly couldn't smile back, partially because she was being needled by jealousy, like a passenger with the terror.

"Fuck..." she breathed and then put her hand back in her lap. She couldn't settle on any particular detail to think about. The bar was in Camden. He'd gambled his safety on a card game.

"And you didn't - you weren't turned." Obviously. She realized she didn't know how that worked.

"What did it feel like?"

Not, 'did it hurt'. Not, 'where you scared'. Not, 'are you okay'.

Like any storyteller, stage or not, he was gratified to see that his tale had an effect on its listener. Virgil could not help but allow his mind to dance a little around hers, and his sleepy smile widened ever-so-slightly. Of course Wav was jealous. In a way she was similar to Nemo - but Neems didn't always know the full consequence of her thrill seeking, which made her seem all the more brave.

His old housemate was a bit worldly. Nobody really knew what they were getting into with vampires (save, perhaps, for people like Cepheus) but Waverly probably understood that the danger was real.

            "What did it feel like?"

The question was a refreshing one. And Waverly was the kind of person he could tell about the high. Nemo wouldn''t have gotten it.

"Painful, at first." Virgil crossed his legs at the ankles and hugged a pillow to himself, reminiscing. "And then... it was the weirdest high, Wav. Like, I went limp but everything inside me was tripping. You know when you've had a really good fuck? Hair pulling, eye rolling, lip biting sort of lay? That was it, but better."

The gillyweed kept him from blushing in his usual way, although he felt warmer just for talking about the experience. If he weren't so terrified of Hooker he would have gone back by now. Just to see.

Virgil brushed a hand through his hair and shook his head. "I couldn't stay though, my friend had to leave. Not sure what they would have done if I did. Getting off on a high like that, I would have said yes to anything."