Scorpius Hyperion Malfoy & Rose Weasley

After a week, Scorpius figures out that Rose abhors silence. If she’s not blasting alternative rock she’s blasting classical music–who blasts classical music?Scorpius sits through an hour of Debussy’s Violin Sonata in G Minor on max volume through the paper thin plaster walls before he’s stomping over to Rose’s room and banging on her door. She doesn’t even pause the music to answer her door.

She leans against the crooked door frame, her arms folded across her chest and she’s smirking.

“Do you own a pair of earphones?” Scorpius asks furiously. Rose shrugs.

“They’re bad for your ear canals,” she says, tapping her pointer finger against her earlobe. “And besides, you can’t feel the resonance with earphones.”

Scorpius gapes at Rose, his mouth opening and closing like a fish.

“You can’t feel the resonance,” he parrots. Rose nods, and Scorpius’s given up.

He grabs his wallet from his room and he treks across campus to the tiny convenience store and buys a pack of lilac ear plugs and a pack of condoms and he pays for everything at the counter where the girl with jet black hair and hot pink highlights and heavily charcoaled eyes gives him an odd look.

“Keep the change,” he says, a little too harshly.

If Scorpius were selfless and diplomatic he’d offer to take his showers in the morning to stagger their use of hot water. But he’s selfish and only diplomatic when money’s involved and he’s not used to having to share a bathroom, much less a sketchy seven by seven foot bathroom. And so everyday is a race against Rose, a race for the sputtering stream of lukewarm water at best from the rusted shower head that barely comes up to Scorpius’s pale shoulders. And it doesn’t help that when Rose wins, she relishes. She takes thirty minute long showers–eighteen when she’s feeling magnanimous.

She leaves her razor lying on the edge of the bath tub, and Scorpius’s convinced that’s unhygienic and she uses so much shampoo that it lingers on his towels and she splashes water onto the stained tile floor and she writes song lyrics on the fogged mirror and she sings in the shower. 

He’s not used to sharing a bathroom–he’s not used to sharing.

Scorpius hears a dull thud from the living room, and he’s only vaguely concerned.

“Scorpius!”

Scorpius rolls his eyes and languidly eases himself out of his chair. He takes his time covering the twenty feet distance between his room and the living room. Rose’s sitting on the ground, hugging her foot to her chest.

“Yeah,” Scorpius says, putting his hands into his pockets and leaning against the wall nonchalantly.

“Your stuff is all over the floor,” says Rose, spreading her hands wide to bring his attention to the socks thrown aside carelessly, the stacks of textbooks at random points, the shoes laying feet away from their pairs, the jackets that miss the dining table chair, and the plastic shopping bags.

“Sorry,” Scorpius shrugs. “Does it mess with your zen or something?”

Rose’s cheeks puff out, and she turns red, matching her hair.

Scorpius returns to his room, while Rose stays on the ground, still thinking of a rebuttal.

Scorpius wakes up to barking–an opera ensemble of barks and woofs and growls and scampering feet and whines. He throws off the covers and doesn’t bother putting a shirt on and marches to the living room and he’s met with a mass of fur and tongues and saliva and wagging tails and he has no idea what’s going on.

“Rose?” Scorpius shouts, and he’s not sure if he’s angry or just confused. Because he loves dogs he really does but it’s the ungodly hours of the morning and it’s unnatural for him to be up before 7:00 am and he really needs to know why there’s two, four, six, eight dogs of various sizes and shapes in his living room.

“Yeah.” Rose sticks her head out from her room and notices the dogs clamoring around Scorpius’s feet. “Oh right, I forgot to tell you.” She smiles just then, a sickly sweet smile that makes Scorpius want to throw something. “I walk dogs sometimes.”

“It’s 6:43,” Scorpius says, “in the morning.”

Rose shrugs.

“Waking up early is good for you body,” Rose says. “It gets your metabolism going.”

Scorpius tries to separate himself from the dogs, stepping over their bodies and he’s padding over to Rose but then he feels something warm and wet and liquid and he’s wearing socks and he doesn’t want to look down and he’s counting to ten in his head and he’s clenching his fists and he can hear Rose laughing.

“Oh shit,” she giggles, “or should I say, piss.”

Rose slides into the seat across from Scorpius at the dining table. He’s typing out his paper, and he doesn’t give Rose so much as a glance. After a couple seconds in which Scorpius thinks maybe Rose will just leave him alone, she suddenly slams his laptop screen down and he just barely withdraws his hands in time.

“What the– be careful. That’s expensive,” Scorpius splutters–how dare she? She has the gall to–

“Scorpius,” Rose says, and Scorpius starts at her staccato annunciation, “this is a tube of toothpaste.” She holds up the metallic blue tube of Colgate MaxFresh toothpaste. “And this is a toothpaste cap.” She holds up the small white cap in between her pointer finger and her thumb. “And the cap, goes on the toothpaste, like this.” And she screws the cap onto the toothpaste.

She slams the toothpaste down in front of Scorpius.

“Get it?” she says.

“Thank you for teaching me the anatomy of a tube of toothpaste,” says Scorpius sardonically. “I would have never known otherwise.”

“You have to put the cap back onto the toothpaste when you’re done,” says Rose through gritted teeth. “Do you know how unsanitary it is to leave the cap off? The germs that can get into the toothpaste?”

“Well, it’s not my fault you started using my toothpaste,” Scorpius says, opening his laptop and examining the edges for any damage.

“It’s my toothpaste!” Rose says shrilly. “You started using my toothpaste!”

Scorpius suddenly becomes deaf, and he’s pressing extra hard on his keyboard to make the click-clack of the keys extra loud and annoying. Rose angrily returns to her room.

He smiles smugly; he knew that it was her toothpaste.

She comes home piss drunk, and Scorpius can hear her keys missing the keyhole. He opens the door, and she keels over into his arms. He’s overwhelmed. There’s a girl passed out in his arms, and if his neighbors decided to step into the hallway they’d think he was kidnapping her. Scorpius’s arms strain as he just stands there, completely nonplussed.

And then his brain kicks in and he drags Rose into the apartment and gently lays her down on the sofa and closes the front door. He turns around to survey the tangle of limbs and auburn curls. He’s all for leaving her right where she is, but then he realizes what an uncomfortable position she’s in and he decides to move her to her bed since that’s only another eight feet of heaving and he’s feeling altruistic.

As he’s carrying her to her room, she stirs.

“Scorpius? Is that you?” she says. Her words slur, and her eyelids flutter.

“Shh,” he says. “I got you.”

“Mm.” Rose snuggles into his body, and he thinks he should be repulsed by the stench of alcohol and sweat mixed with Garnier hairspray and Juicy Couture’s Viva la Juicy but he isn’t.

He sets Rose down on her bed, and after a second’s thought he peels off her leather jacket, missing the litter of freckles across her body, and slips her feet out of her booties. He throws the blankets over her body and turns to leave.

He shuts the door behind him, and there’s this weird tingly feeling on his skin and his spine and in his stomach. He shivers and rolls his neck. He hears a police siren and he jumps. He returns to his room, scowling.

Scorpius can hear Rose walking to his room by the clicking of her heels against the fake wood flooring. She’s supposed to be going out tonight with friends, but she’s already twenty minutes late and now she’s coming over to shout at him, presumably.

Scorpius dog-ears the page he’s reading in his textbook, sets it down on his lap, and folds his hands together on top, patiently waiting for the tirade the Rose is no doubt about to launch into.

She arrives, and Scorpius’s thrown off by her appearance. Because she’s wearing this tight black number and plum strappy heels and her hair is in a bun and he can see the elegant line of her neck, her long, long, long legs and she’s showing cleavage and his mouth is dry.

A black thong hangs from her pointer finger, which she’s pointing at him accusingly.

“What is this?” she says shrilly. Scorpius recovers, but he has to force himself to look above her shoulders.

“That, I believe, is a piece of lingerie,” Scorpius says, his voice drips with arrogance. “More specifically, a thong.”

Rose seethes. She chucks the skimpy piece of cloth at him, and it performs a rather disappointing parabolic descent to the ground.

“Why was it stuffed between the couch cushions?” she says, her hands now on her hips.

Scorpius shrugs, and he has to cross his legs because his hormones are raging.

“Have your parents ever told you how babies are made?” his voice is sickly sweet, and he’s surprised by how well he can emulate Rose’s tone. Rose narrows her eyes at him, and he just smirks.

“The next time you… have a friend over, I don’t want to hear, see, or know about it at all,” she says. “You could at least do it in your own room. God.”

“If this is what you’re like about couch-sex, I can’t imagine you’ll want to know about the other places that I’ve ‘done it’,” Scorpius replies smoothly, the smirk growing.

Rose’s livid. She’s speechless.

“You– you– you– “

And crosses the room in three long strides and she’s tugging at the front of his shirt and her lips crash into his lips and it’s messy and violent and Scorpius shouldn’t be enjoying it but he is and his hands are acting of their own accord and suddenly his knees are buckling and she’s straddling him and he’s lost all of his common sense and he’s not thinking anymore.

The dynamic of their relationship doesn’t change much, but it’s the subtle things. Like, Scorpius will accidentally leave the toilet seat up, and Rose will confront him, and then he’ll give her a look that says “I’ve seen you naked, do you really want to argue with me right now?” and she’ll get flustered and she’ll leave the conversation half-finished. Or, Rose will be blasting her music, and Scorpius will stomp over to her room, and when she answers she’ll glance down at his crotch with this smirk and he’ll become self-conscious and he’ll leave without saying a word.

One night, Scorpius is studying for his Foundations of Marketing exam, and he just loses it. He throws his textbook against the wall and pushes his chair back and he walks with purpose to Rose’s room and she stands up indignantly when he enters her room without permission but then he’s pushing her into her desk and he’s kissing her with this sordid desperation and she understands.

He almost hates that she does.

It’s been three weeks of hot, hostile, but really fucking great sex. They’re not in a relationship, and they’re definitely not monogamous, but Scorpius hasn’t so much as looked at another girl’s ass. It drives him crazy, how when he’s wishing someone would shoot him during Brand Management he’s also thinking about Rose’s warm lips and soft skin, how when he see the red marks on Rose’s neck he feels a sense of accomplishment, how when he lingers in her bed afterwards he thinks Rose holds onto him a little tighter.

Slowly, they begin to tolerate one another. Rose turns her music down when she knows Scorpius has an exam, and he stops leaving the toilet seat up to spite her. They develop a dysfunctional, symbiotic relationship that mostly revolves around sex, but it’s more than just sex.

It’s the demeaning but harmless jokes they leave one another in the fog of the bathroom mirror; it’s the new pack of cheap wine glasses that Scorpius finds sitting on the kitchen counter; it’s the USB labeled ‘Songs I Mildly Tolerate’ that Rose comes across lying next to her laptop; it’s the eggplant-purple shaggy rug that appears in the bathroom; it’s the new tube of toothpaste with a flip top cap; it’s the pee pad that sits in the corner of the living room.

It’s the smile that flashes across Scorpius’s face when he says “good morning” to Rose, and it’s the glint in Rose’s eyes when she says “good night” to Scorpius.

Scorpius’s not much of a presents-type of guy, but he feels like he owes Rose. He buys cheap beer and microwaveable-just-add-water mac and cheese and a Costco-size box of movie-theater-buttered popcorn.

On his way back from the store, Scorpius walks past some dope holding a bouquet of pink and white flowers, and he smirks. Why buy flowers when you can buy food?

He’s pretty proud of his agglomeration for Rose, until she comes home, her arms laden with double chocolate chunk cookies and red velvet cupcakes the size of Scorpius’s fist and cards that sing “Happy Birthday” and even balloons tied to her backpack and a bouquet of fucking flowers.

She drops everything onto the dining table and lets out a sigh of relief.

“Wow,” says Scorpius. Rose laughs, and short, breathy laugh that catches in her throat. But she’s smiling and she looks happy and Scorpius feels bitter.

“Yeah,” she says, feigning casualty. “God, do you know how embarrassing it is to walk across campus with fucking balloons? It’s like I’m eight again.” But the smile lighting her face suggests anything but.

Scorpius wouldn’t know, because he’s never had someone care enough to buy him balloons on his birthday. His friends were the type that bought him an eight-pack and called it a day; his parents just added a couple zeros to his savings account or gave him a new car; his ex-girlfriends bought stiff clothes that he sent back to the stores. Scorpius’s never had someone care.

But Scorpius just smiles, and Rose offers him a cookie.

He thinks about the beer in the fridge, the mac and cheese in the microwave, and the popcorn in the pantry. He’s almost ashamed of his present-choices now.

Rose chews thoughtfully on her cookie, skimming through the stack of birthday cards and shaking out the bills. She finishes the cookie and brushes the crumbs off of the dinner table. She gets up, looking for water to wash down the dry pastry, and she wanders near the microwave that really only heats up a quarter-size radius. Her eyes widen, and she looks even more doe-like that usual.

“Is that- is that mac and cheese?” her voice goes all high like it does when she’s excited, and Scorpius feels a flicker of hope.

“Yes?” he offers hesitantly.

“Did you buy some for me?” she asks, but she’s already opening the microwave and taking out the styrofoam cup of microwaved noodles.

“Yeah,” Scorpius says, his confidence growing. “Actually, I also bought some beer and popcorn. Since, y’know, we’re out.” He’s shoving his hands into his pants pockets and shrugging his shoulders like he does when he feels vulnerable. Rose stares at him in disbelief, her pale blue eyes wider than normal.

“You– you bought me mac and cheese?”

“And beer and popcorn,” Scorpius adds. He’s avoiding her gaze now, so he doesn’t see her break out into a smile that stretches from ear to ear, doesn’t see the sheer joy twinkling in her eyes, doesn’t see her clear the distance between them in two long strides, but he does see her rise on her toes and kiss him.

It’s unnatural, the kiss, because they’re used to violent kisses, angry kisses, fervent kisses, but this kiss is soft, and emotional, and sweet. He can taste the chocolate on her lips, and he can smell her perfume–he’s enticed by it.

He takes his hands out of his pockets, and they’re framing her face. He draws circles with his thumbs on her smooth cheeks and runs his fingers through her hair and kisses down her neck to her collarbone.

“Thank you,” she says hoarsely, her words ghosting across the flesh of his ears.

And he trembles. He feels a shiver, that starts at the base of his spine and works its way up to his neck and then flows into his stomach. It’s a shiver that makes his toe curl and his insides melt.

He’s in unknown territory now, and he’s scared, but he’s ready.