14 Sept 2012
8pm, Friday night
Virgil's room, Diagon Alley

It was still early on a Friday night. Figaro was laid out on Virgil's bed having more gillyweed than he normally did. He had one hand under his shirt, absently scratching at his belly. One knee was up, lolling back and forth. The other leg was out straight, his foot hanging off the edge of the bed. His gaze was far off, further than the rafters above him. With his glasses sitting on the window sill, the view was hazier yet.

"I think I love her," he said earnestly to Virgil. "I thought I was knew what love was, right? I thought it was this feeling but, no, it's being, mate. It's existence. I used to be such an idiot. School boy shit. I loved Sophie. I loved Fauna. But with Wil, I am love."

He held out the joint, still gazing at the ceiling. He was aiming for the dish on the night stand.

There was no longer a need for pretense for Figaro to find Virgil. It used to be that it was all about clothes and not looking like a scrumbly urchin for his dates with Wilhemena Gunn, but Figaro found Virgil an easy companion beyond fashion counselor.

Virgil Carstairs blew on his fingernails, watching the nail varnish dry in the ten seconds promised by Lipwitch. It was a lovely dark red, almost black, that glimmered menacingly in the right light.

            "I think I love her..."

He looked across the room from his desk, where he was perched on a stool and not-really-reading a book about illusions. Figaro floated in a cloud of gillyweed and rambled about his lady love again. Virgil's previous infatuation with Cepheus seemed lighthearted compared to the way Fig went on about Wilhemena. It was one thing to sigh and play music and lounge around in melancholy. But to say love!

Love was a big word. Though he tossed it around easily enough - anyone can say they love a play or book or a new pair of shoes - to Virgil, love was an ultimate surrender.

He checked again if his nails were dry and then pushed his sleeves up further, trotting over to the besotted wizard.

"You are love?" he drawled, plucking the joint from Figaro to top up his own hazy high. "Didn't realise I was in the company of Aphrodite herself..." Virgil smiled at his supine friend, eyebrows slightly raised. "What does it feel like to embody love itself? I ask as a mere, humble mortal."

Figaro's grin was wide and easy. He did feel like Aphrodite, whatever the white boy version of that was.

"Mmm, the smells are sweeter. The stars are brighter. Nothing matters. Everything matters. It all matters. Her skin..."

Figaro sat up and crossed his legs. He stretched and arched his back then folded back forward again, looking a little dazed.

"It's so smooth. And she likes me. She really likes me, right?"

It wasn't something the long-time class clown was used to. Oh, he'd had friends, but he'd never felt so desired. It was a bittersweet thing to acknowledge, but now that he had it, it was intoxicating.

He set the joint down in the porcelain saucer that served as their makeshift ashtray, clicking his tongue at Figaro. Merlin save him from having to listen to anyone wax lyrical on Wilhemena Gunn's skin. 'Smooth' would suffice.

           "She really likes me, right?"

"Are you asking me or telling me?" Virgil wandered to his mirror on an impulse, and combed his hair back with his hands - it was doing that thing again, sticking up stubbornly at the back. "And like is rather weak, isn't it?"

His eyes, with catlike sleepiness, focused on Figaro in the background of his reflection. "Compared to being love or however you put it."

Did the stars shine brighter for Wilhemena too? The flowers sweeter? He glanced at a glass vase on his dressing table - a single purple hydrangea surrounded by delphiniums, from his own paramour.

As much as he teased, Figaro's smitten rambling carried a familiar tune.

"What?"

Figaro wasn't accustomed to the heady affects of the gillyweed. It took him an extra long interval to process, in the meantime he laughed lightly and ran his fingers through his short blonde hair, which was growing out a bit lately.

"Like is everything. People don't like me, mate. They like watching me. I'm a court jester," he said airily without hurt. "I'm good for a party. I'm delightfully tolerable. But they don't like me."

It was rarely insightful if not incomplete.

"But Wil, she likes me. She sees me. And I love her. I can't believe it."

Sometimes he felt so dizzyingly lucky, like he was weightless being pulled along by gossamer tethers. What he wasn't saying was how easily she was able to keep him at her side, giving and withdrawing her affection and approval so that he chased it and she felt desired over and over again.

He lingered at the dressing table as Figaro absorbed their chatter. Virgil smoked often enough to have grown tolerant of the herb, and could easily go about his day without too much trouble. The pleasure was in the stretched out, languid nature of his thoughts and how they floated around his head like placid clouds.

Virgil was trying on a lipstick to match the nail varnish when Fig spoke up again. He laughed a little, instantly picturing him as a medieval jester - oh. Figaro was being frank. That was... deeply depressing.

"Do you actually think people don't like you?" he kissed the inside of his wrist to blot the lipstick and held a hand up to his reflection to compare the varnish. "That sounds like a Tawse problem," he remarked cattily, turned round to shoot Figaro a teasing grin. "Or a Mcboid problem."

Overly posh Slytherins and flavourless Hufflepuffs. Sellaphix was neither posh nor flavourless, and much more interesting for it.

"They way I see things," Virgil picked up a couple of small golden hoop earrings and leaned back against the dresser as he put them on. "Wil should more than just like you. She's not getting any younger, is she?"

He regretted phrasing it that way - anyone saying the same about Ceph would get kicked in the shins - but it rubbed him the wrong way to see Figaro think so little of himself.

Fig laughed with a rarely contemptuous snarl at Virgil's jab at Moria McBoid, whom Figaro had never resolved things with and Virgil never seemed to like in the first place.

Still moving about Virgil's bed as if it were his own, he patted around and found his glasses again. It did a little something for Fig's ego to hear that Virgil thought he was worth liking - a bit of a revelation really. Virgil was putting on make up. He was so nice. Except when he wasn't! The comment about Wilhemena's age was met by Figaro not with hostility but with a deep sigh and a wider smile.

"Boyo, no! Don't be like that. You've no clue. I dunno if you've ever been with - " Figaro breathed again. "Have you? Now I can't remember if you're a hundred percent gay or... But no. The sex, Carstairs. It's really good. She's older. She's grown, right. She knows things."

He got a faraway look again.

Mature for language and sexual references.

Fig had to be the only person to ever call him boyo! Virgil pulled a face, shaking his head.

"I've fucked women," he clarified in a drawl and turned back to the dressing table mirror. "Older ones too. Good sex is still just sex though, isn't it?" His reflection stared back at him with dreamy, hazy eyes and he rifled absently through his make-up bag for some mascara.

Figaro was in a whole other world. It was funny, in a way. Merlin knew what kind of moves Wilhemena could pull in bed, to send a wizard all the way off the deep end like this! Maybe he should be asking for notes.

"Personally," Virgil mused. "I like the afterglow..." he batted his eyelashes at himself to check the clear coat of mascara. "You know, when you're laying together or holding each other, saying silly things. It feels honest."

Emotionally honest, he thought. Some of those moments Virgil never wanted to speak of - they were too private or tender and talking about them out loud felt crass.

But there were other experiences. "One time," he smiled to himself, "I slept with this wizard[1] who liked sketching me after we fucked."

1.	Malachi Reid - City Sang Such Mad Crescendo

Virgil talked about the after with such fondness and wholly differently than the fuck itself. It seemed romantic, like a ladies' book. Figaro found he couldn't relate and attributed the apparent anomaly it all to the Virgil-ness of Virgil.

"Wil'd never go for that," he laughed. "If I'm not out before she's done with her smoke - fff!" He whistled, leaving the nature of her fastidious up to the imagination. Again, despite the obvious red flags of the relationship, Fig seemed utterly overtaken.

And now, suddenly, he was waylaid by hunger.

"You hungry? I'm hungry. You don't mind?" He was making his way over to the door, intending to raid the cupboard for cheese. Dante followed him at a trot, sensing, perhaps, Figaro's intentions.

He posed for the mirror, lifting his chin this way and that in a typical display of vanity. Virgil almost missed his friend's response. And when it did sink in, Figaro was already up and talking about treats to assuage their gillyweed munchies.

The flat was in its usual state, relatively neat and quiet this early on a Friday night. There was always food in their kitchen - from his cooking and snacking and picking up curious things at the grocers'. Virgil overtook Figaro when they left the room, and made a beeline for the cupboard above the stove.

"So she's still kicking you out after the fuck?" he asked as he rifled through the various goods, taking down a tin of cracker crisps and Irish cheddar still wrapped. Fig had mentioned before but that had been earlier in the relationship with Wil.

It didn't sound like a relationship, really, if they weren't spending time together outside the bedroom....

He opened another cupboard without thinking, simply reaching for whatever his hazy appetite demanded. A jar of linden honey, figs in syrup. His mind wandered between food and Figaro's strange situation. A situationship.

"But, like..." Virgil looked at the other wizard, confused. He didn't want to make assumptions. "Do you want to stay with her after fucking, or do you get off to the whole being kicked out?"

"Hmm?"

He had the cheese and crackers now and was going into a drawer for a knife. Dante waited nearby.

"Oh, yeah, well." Figaro hemmed a moment. Virgil's question was received as a totally new idea. "S'good question. Honestly, both, I reckon."

Figaro had the knife now and portioned off some of the cheddar. It was easy to call to mind the giddy feeling of the after-sex daze, and how she acted cross and indifferent, but also how she watched as he found his clothes.

"That's not weird, is it? I mean, there's dinner, as well. We go out loads. Fancy places. We went to a play, even. It was good. You like plays. Oi!"

The final interjection was a comment to Dante who had appeared on the countertop, as if he'd Apparated silently.

He stared dreamily, without moving, at the linden honey and syrupy figs on the kitchen counter - as if he wasn't sure what he'd been thinking when he took them down from the cupboard.

            "... Honestly, both, I reckon."

Oh, well. That was different, then, if Fig was going out with her and liked getting kicked out. Merlin knew everyone danced to their own tune and Virgil wasn't going to judge his former classmate for discovering strange new avenues of delight. Edgar liked to say that everyone was made of the same brittle stardust but maybe some people were made out of elastic.

"No, I don't think it's weird," he snapped out of his daze and joined Figaro to slice off a bit of cheese as well. "Whatever inks your quill, right? I prefer staying, after. Especially if I'm dating, not really a problem if it's just fucking."

Virgil crumbled some cheddar for Dante, who twisted round after her own tail before investigating the offer. "Have you got Halloween plans with her?" he drew his wand and twitched it delicately over the ingredients.

"I know it's ages away but I'm trying to think of a couples costume Ceph will agree to." Crackers arranged themselves on a plate while slivers of figs joined bits of cheese to lay atop.

If that had been self-consciousness that Figaro had been feeling, back when he'd wondered aloud if his thing with Wil was 'weird', then it passed quickly. Dante got what she needed from Virgil, so Figaro could be at peace with his own cheese for the moment.

It wasn't difficult to leave the topic of Wilhemena. "Yeah, it's just fucking," he echoed without really paying attention to it, unaware was contradicting his last half-hour's confession of existential soul-twined love. More than anything, the gillyweed made it easy to float on, float towards Virgil and Cepheus.

Cepheus Gamp. Tall, pale, thick dark hair, and all. Figaro folded over the countertop to eat.

"What, doesn't our Gamp like a costume? You could do from Formation.[1] You know, the Severed Sphinx cover art. One of you's the head half and the other is the lion half. See, that's a great idea."

1.	Hawkshead Attacking Formation

He frowned to himself as he drizzled honey over the crackers and cheese, something tugging at the back of his mind. Just fucking. That's what Virgil had said but it didn't sound right coming from the other wizard. Figaro was confusing. Or maybe he was just confused.

That costume idea was certainly a confused one. Virgil's frown dissolved into giggles as he shook his head at the image. Entirely unserious. What did he expect?

"I haven't floated the dressing up idea yet," he leaned against the counter and lifted a cracker precariously, fingers already sticky. "But Ceph likes costumes. He's playful. And sweet. And a better sport than I deserve, honestly."

Virgil ate the savoury-sweet concoction in one bite, chewing loudly. It was delicious. A song in his mouth, perfect. Gillyweed made everything much too tasty. "Sometimes I feel like picking a fight with him, just because he's so nice. But it's exhausting, isn't it? Picking fights and being mean," he rambled and stifled a yawn.

"God." Virgil pulled a face. "I sound dull."

"Yeah, you're a doorstop," Figaro said, teasing, drawing it out. As if Virgil Carstairs were boring. "Absolute puddle of a man. Everyone says so."

Figaro, having his cheese, thought Virgil was batty for saying so. Weirdly self-deprecating.

"Get off that. You can read minds, you've got a place at work called the Infinity Room or whatever, your cousin plays for Falmouth," Figaro paused for emphasis. Earnest Carstairs was a professional quidditch chaser for Figaro's favorite team, which he tried not to mention over-often. "And you're posh. You've been with a muggle. Yeah. Drip."

He was rambling, leaving little room to be interrupted. "Fights can be fun. Sophie and I fought all the time."

Sophie Flickwick. Figaro's only semi-serious relationship. Serious only in it's cumulative duration and intensity.