babylon, the one I'm wasted on

Okay, perhaps reaching for his wand instead of reaching for his book was a stupid move. It really undermined how bright Damien believed himself to be. Even his wand could be brighter than him at the command of Lumos. Still, the boy did not reach for his book. He continued to point his wand at Roxi, who had flipped open the book without hesitation.

The page fell to that of his mother. At what sounded like a compliment of his drawing by Roxi, Damien lowered his wand. And then, he raised it again, willing himself not to be distracted just because someone was admiring something that he was doing for once, someone besides his mother, who he believed had always been biased anyway, and so could not be trusted for honest judgement. Besides, even if she knew she was sketching all the time, he never consented to show them to her.

Damien nodded slowly to Roxi's question. And only then, he decided that his wand was no good. He was never going to send a spell at her successfully, not because he was weak with them, but because his heart was weak. Quickly, though, he took the steps necessary to be closer to Roxi, and made a grab for the book. He did not yank at it, though. If the book got torn, he would be massively pissed. "Give it back, Roxi." There, the last name was dropped.

Roxi was beginning to forget what she had been so upset about, why she had been so distracted and not herself. True, she still was not acting so much like herself, but she was starting to lose the sour attitude she had previously been displaying. Intrigue and wonder replaced it- what was a boy like Damien doing drawing, and doing it well.

She flipped through some more pages, going quicker, catching sight of forms and being quite drawn to all of them, but feeling something urging her to look on. She murmured, "Really, these are really good. Wow, Damien," she said, her disbelief evident. She was almost asking the question 'Why is it that you have hidden this talent?'

And then she reached one of the later drawing and something jolted in her. She looked to the fact to confirm and saw that it had been scratched out. She looked up, the question apparent on her face, when Damien snatched it from her hands, though the tone had changed. She stared deeply at him, the question burning into her expression. In a soft voice, she asked, "What was that last picture of, Damien?"

Damien was not pleased to be the entertainment. No, not at all. He was a very pissy little boy, and he wore scowls as frequent as one wears underwear. Even with the slight satisfaction he was getting from Roxi's compliment on his drawing, he still wore it. Thankfully, there were still people around who reminded him to smile. Then again, the Gryffindor girl elicited both expressions from him, although the latter was done more in secrecy. Damien did not respond to Roxi's questions on his hidden talent. He though it was sufficiently obvious. He would address it, but only if he gets his book back. Too bad for him then, that Roxi was quicker than him.

Sure, the book came back to him when he yanked at it cautiously. But the look on Roxi's face was enough to tell him that she had seen something he did not want her to see. Of course, what else could it be? Tucking the book safely between his side and his arm, Damien rolled his eyes. It was an attempt to stall for time, really, all his dramatics, or the lack thereof.

"Little Red Riding Hood, of course. What else could it be?" Damien spotted a speck of dust at his pants, and dusted it away casually. And then, he turned to the girl. "Look, Weasley. If I hear you speak of this, I will not hesitate to set my wand on you." His eyebrows twitched in its frown. "For real." And then he continued. "What were you doing here anyway, intruding into my space. Nightmare?" Damien smirked. She had looked troubled after all. Still, he was pretty sure it was not a dream that disturbed her. He wanted to probe, for sure, but he could only do it his way.

Roxi has still not recovered from the dirty feeling of being used, or being chased after, being only an object to someone else. And with Damien treating her like a fool, reprimanding her like a child, she felt her heart sink even lower. Maybe she really was as worthless as people made her feel. Perhaps she was just a silly girl with silly ideas and would only benefit the lusting and the spontaneous.

But had she not always lived her life that way- and happily too? How many people at this school could honestly say that, that they had lived their lives happily, thus far? They all went out of their way to make their lives dismal and tragic. Roxi thought it made much more sense to lighten to load and make it fun now before it all went to hell once they graduated. Maybe she had less reason to feel foolish than she had thought.

He claimed it was Red Riding Hood and before she could stop herself, she pointed out, "That didn't look like Red Riding Hood." He wheeled on her and she felt herself sidestep, lowering her head so she was looking up at him through her lashes, her hip bumping into the wall, her mouth parting slightly as she reacted. At his words she sighed and nodded. "Fine."

He asked her what she was doing out and about, and she rotated so her back was against the wall, leaning her head against it and shrugging. "Wanderin' I guess," she drawled. "Just getting away from the hubbub I guess. Maybe my 'Damien is about, go annoy' senses went off." She lolled her head towards him and grinned cheesily.

There was a look on Roxi's face that Damien could not quite peg. Despite the inability to deduce the meaning of it, a part of him felt something. There it went, his heart. It was squeezing in him again. He blamed the day that he had allowed the Gryffindor girl to let him know something that he really should not have been curious about. Still, what's done was done, he needed to quit crying over spilled milk. The record was being overplayed in his head now, and he was getting tired of it. He could admit his feelings to himself, or continue to fight a battle that was inside him anyway, and no one was going to know even if he had admitted it to himself. Somehow, it suddenly seemed so useless to fight himself. What was there to fight about?

With the start of her reply, Roxi made Damien pause in his thoughts. He looked at her, and actually enjoyed doing so. A grin tugged at his lips, when the girl mentioned why she was out and about at this time of the night. Of course, he thought, it was not true. It pleased him, nonetheless. Damien took a step closer to Roxi, and slipped his hands into his pockets. At that, the book slipped off again, and fell onto the floor. With no one around besides the two of them, he did not care to pick it up.

"I'm surprised. I don't see you with a Firewhiskey or a cigarette, and I'm surprised, Roxi." He should have been surprised that he was warming up to her, but his mind was not on that. Damien tapped his left foot against the ground, as if in thought, and then he took another step closer. He wondered at his calculated steps. What was it? He wanted to stand next to the girl. "And that was Little Red Riding Hood. Were you trying to insult my drawing?" Sure, the sentence was accusatory, but the tone was not. Damien had dropped the harsh tone in his voice.

Roxi reached her hand up and tangled it into her mane of copperish hair, rolling her lips so she could continue talking. She found that her lips were getting dry lately and it had resulted in her wasting galleons on chapstick so she would not look gross and unkissable. Roxi survived school on the credit of kisses, it paid for her homework, for friendship, for all the things she needed... She could not lose her most valuable currency.

She glanced down at her hands and lifted the one with her new ring. She turned it and reread the inscription and felt her gut filled with the discomfort of havcing a lie so plainly set upon on her finger. 'Nobody can hurt me without my permission.' Perhaps it was not a lie. After all, she gave every single one of them permission, now didn't she?

She glanced up to see Damien had inched closer. At his words, she let her head fall back against the wall and she sighed. "That's what I need right now, a cigarette," she said softly, a small longing in her voice. He continued on and she glanced back at him. "No, I'm saying that it was kind of scary. And that it sort of looked like me."

It was O.W.L.s year, for Merlin's sake. Perhaps he should be spending time on some kind of academic work, even if his homework was completed. He could even look for Athena Goyle, and ask that she started teaching him something already. But no, he had chosen the sketchbook, and a night at the Astronomy Tower. He was, in his own words, being idle. And while his conscience was doing its job, Damien let his eyes watch Roxi, as she looked at her ring. The way she looked at it, it was as if that little things meant something. While trying to appear disinterested, Damien failed in the act. His eyes strained to look from the direction of the girl's eyes to the ring, attempting to locate where it had settled itself at.

At the fall of Roxi's head back against the wall, Damien allowed himself to look at her, half in darkness and half in the weak glow of the moonlight. Just as he was about to relax, something bugged him. It was not what one would expect to perturb him. No, he had noticed details on the girl's face that he did not put onto his sketch before. Or was it just the play of shadow and light on her skin, in her eyes? Damien tried to quell the uneasiness he felt from feeling like his sketch was incomplete, and wanted to return to it. The problem was, he had marred his drawing with nonsensical scratchings. He would have to do it all over again. But why did he need to?

"Why the need for a cigarette?" Damien asked, not understanding the reliance on something he was never familiar with. And with both hands tucked in his pockets, he swung ever so slightly, so that his back was against the wall. Standing next to Roxi now, he contemplated what was on his mind. Times like these made him question himself, his identity. It felt oddly comfortable, where he was at, despite the gnawing at the back of his mind at how he had to attempt to shake Roxi off, or even annoy her, especially when she seemed so vulnerable and intent on keeping to herself.

Damien took a deep breath, almost closing his eyes at the serenity of the atmosphere. When he allowed his eyes to open gradually, he turned his head to look at Roxi again. He was doing a whole lot of looking, as if it made up for the lack of speech. Speech failed, anyway. What could he say when he was straddling between taunting her and walking away? The new place of seeming acceptance had no room for a language for him to speak. Or, at least, he had to learn one. Shrugging, Damien shifted his body so that his right shoulder inclined it against the wall.

"Roxi ..." He paused, and bit his lower lip. What was he going to do? Was he going to confess that the sketch was indeed, her? But he would then have to explain why he scratched her face with ugly doodles. "I'll draw you." Just like that, Damien allowed a first, not knowing what the implications were, at his offer. He wanted very much to use the tip of his finger to trace the outline of Roxi's face, but that would be a step too far into acceptance, and willingness. He did not know if his mind could handle that impulse.

Roxi released her ring finger, deciding to give it some time away from her scrutiny. She instead reached up and grabbed the ends of her copperish hair, untangling the ends. Her hair never stayed untangled nor straight for long. She got it from her mother who, if she did not contain her hair in braids, had the craziest hair. Roxi's hair naturally curled, naturally tangled, naturally made her seem like a wild woman. Her hands were experts at separating the strands from each other by now.

She could feel Damien's eyes on her and she turned, in time to face his question regarding her cigarette. She raised her shoulders high, taking in a big breath to give a proper explanation about the necessirty of nicotine in her veins and she sighed, dropping her shoulders as though giving up on the thought, or the effort it took to explanation. "Oh..." she said, struggling for words.

A speechless Roxi was not something easy to observe.

She sighed again. "It just helps me escape. Helps me escape that feeling that settles," her hand floated down from her hair and rested at her stomach. "Right here. The feeling right there, you know?" She shrugged again, not even knowing where she was going with this discussion, if it could even be called as such. It was mostly her musing sad, dad thoughts.

She was ready to give up and escuse herself, force her way past the boys that were making her life so difficult to even be identified as her own, when he suddenly said he could draw her. She looked over at him, confusion on her face, asking why he wanted to even bother. "Uh..." she tried to think of what sort of question was asked in this situation but all she came up with was, "What?"

She was responding very little. It frustrated Damien. He was used to her being the action, the one who initiated. Expectedly, he should have just grown bored and walked away, but he could not do so. He stayed, he stayed to watch her, whatever little she was doing. He stayed because the scent of Roxi was hard to walk away from. He stayed because he was wasted, not on any kind of drugs or alcohol. He was wasted on her. Just for once, Damien wished he was someone else. He was tired of the things he was fighting for. He wanted to be above things, above all, but he never came close, yet. Perhaps he was simply too young. He had watched the older boys in his House strut around with such confidence, strength, and power. Their family names brought them that, so did the wealth and the reputation that came along, and that they had made for themselves during their years in Hogwarts. He wanted to be like them, even if he would just be another copy. He could not care about whether he was an original or a copy. He just wanted to get there.

He could, perhaps, consider a suggestion made by his mother's family. The Knights had sufficient reputation, wealth and power. They were not the best, but they were comfortably in the circle of Established Pureblood Families. When Marissa was pregnant with Damien, they had wanted ownership over him. She, however, nurtured him with the knowledge that he was a part of Lorcan D'Eath. She had done it for love, believing that a show of dedication to Lorcan would allow her to keep his heart. But it failed. Lorcan wanted his son, but not her. The Knights have since opened up to the option of getting Damien back under their wing, but Marissa had maintained that it was all going to be Damien's own choice when he was old enough to make one. He was, however, not of age yet. Besides, he wanted time with his father. He was not going to wake up one day, and decide to permanently remove the D'Eath from his name, to be under the Knights, as much as that was what Marissa's family had hoped for. They abhorred Lorcan, after all.

While Damien had softened his attitude towards Roxi, her confusion made him feel embarrassed for it. He blinked for a couple of moments, before he scowled. "What was it that you did not understand? Did you leave your brain in your dorm? I just said I'll draw you, right?" He let out a bit of a temper. And then Damien let the temper fall. The temper that matched his passion for the girl. He did not know how to handle both. And so, keeping his mouth shut, Damien got his sketchbook up and flipped furiously to the first clean page, before he frowned and stared at Roxi's face. He gripped hard on his pencil, but he merely stared at Roxi.

Damien had always been quiet- calm, cool, and collected, that was how Roxi had always viewed him. That was why they had seemed so different. Yes, they were both 'cool' in their different groups. But she was hardly ever calm or collected. Roxi was pleasantly falling apart, always overreacting over something, always going nuts-o over something or other, but never quite serious. Now she did not feel calm, cool, collected, nuts, fun, crazy... She was not sure what she felt.

But Damien was not being himself, not the Damien she knew, the flat character she had begun to scratch the surface of, because he suddenly reacted, very aggressively. She could see the frustration and anger explode on his face at his exclamation and she flinched, so very un-Gryffindorlike, but Roxi was not feeling very brave right now either.

She relaxed, and watched hin intently staring at her. "We could sit or..." she shrugged awkwardly, not sure, and slid down so she was sitting against the wall. Still though, she watched him- this Slytherin boy who so adamently claimed to hate her and yet... seemed to almost... care what she thought of him. "Who are you, Damien?" she said, her eyes innocent. "I'm getting the feeling you're not who you make out to be."