May 28th, 1895 — Astronomy Tower

The winter had been dark, but after winter had come spring. Samuel Griffith, after his return to Hogwarts, returned to a life of forced normalcy. The abyss of January levelled into the grey marshes of February. In March, the trees of the forest wore fragile green adornments.
In May, it had been unusually warm. The sunny days spent out on the castle grounds left a tentative tan on the surface of the man, who appeared to the onlooker to have regained his usual good health and vitality.

All was not normal, however — or, Samuel Griffith feared that the comfort and peace that propped him up these days was borrowed. He was on his way to the Astronomy Tower and on his way to the woman who so freely lent him contentment. Of course, that too was not without complications. But he was basking in the ray of light and tried not to ponder his dependency on it.

This night Hogwarts held the coming-out ball, opening the social season, and the castle was flush with visitors. A gaggle of them walked in front of the professor and he turned the corner leading up to the stairway of the tower trailing behind them. Samuel Griffith was not partaking in the festivities, as he had no interest in marital conquest. He walked slowly and in a relaxed manner, his eyes fixed over the heads of the guests, passively surveying his environment.

He saw him at once.

Don Juan stood at the door of the Astronomy Tower. Griffith stopped in his tracks, stunned. The group passed between them and then, Don Juan Dempsey was gone, vanished into the corridor that led upwards towards the area of Samuel Griffith's life where Don Juan did not, under any circumstances, belong.

Had their eyes met for a second? Atypical uncertainty held Samuel back for a moment; he was not sure. A sensation unfurled in his stomach and the soft spring air turned frigid. Slowly, he ascended the stairs, passing the fateful door at the top in complete silence, and stepped out on the platform.

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Don Juan Dempsey

  

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By the time he'd parted ways with Hanna Applegate, Don Juan had felt much more firmly in possession of the remaining contents of his stomach, but he still had the lingering taste of bile in his mouth. While she had headed back towards the Great Hall, Don Juan had made a detour towards the nearest door to the open air, hoping to find a quiet, unassuming place to smoke before slipping back in himself. The exit he found seemed to be near enough the Great Hall that it was a traffic pattern for other partygoers, which had its positives and negatives. Wandering too far off the beaten path at Hogwarts was likely a recipe for disaster, given his reputation, so it was good to be converging on the guest-approved areas once again. On the other hand, it was hardly the solitude he'd had in mind when he'd thought about taking a moment to better collect himself. To that end, he found a doorway he could lurk in — not the main one that people were using to enter and exit — and fished out a cigarette, hoping to cling to the shadows and not be bothered until he was ready to head back inside.

He was halfway through his cigarette when Griffith appeared. Don Juan stubbed it out immediately and did the only thing he could think of to make himself even less intrusive, even more hidden and out-of-the-way than he had already been — he ducked inside the doorway. He was hoping Griffith hadn't seen him, but wanted to get out of sight in here just in case he had. There was nothing in the tower except stairs, though, so there was only one way to go but up. Had Don Juan taken Astronomy for more than the minimum required tenure he might have remembered this tower and known that going up was a fool's errand if he wanted to get back to the party, but he assumed there would be a door a story up or two that would get him back into the castle proper. He was up three stories, with no door in sight and a noise from below like someone had followed him in, before he realized with the benefit of hindsight that he should have moved forward, not backwards. He could have disappeared into a group more easily than he could have blended in to the walls in this tower. Griffith wouldn't have approached him if he was talking to someone else... would he? He hadn't seemed especially interested in Don Juan in the intervening months since they had last crossed paths. He had stopped coming to the laboratory unceremoniously. When Don Juan had realized he was gone he had written — frantically, desperately, trying to get another fix before he lapsed in to withdrawal. By the time he'd come out the other side of the sickness he had recovered enough of his dignity to stop begging. Griffith had been well and truly gone by then. He hadn't written since. Perhaps his interest in Don Juan's life had waned; perhaps seeing him at a party would mean nothing to the professor. But Don Juan couldn't really believe that, deep down — it would have been too easy on him, and these kinds of things had never been easy. They always came back with teeth.

The only way out of the tower was at the top, onto the wide open-air platform that students used for stargazing. There was no escape here — unless he were to throw himself off the tower. He contemplated it briefly. Probably Hogwarts had some kind of charm in place to keep him from dying if he did. It would have been an unfortunate way to lose a student. Given that his mother had dragged him here in an effort to look respectable, she would probably not be enthused by rumors spreading that he had made a suicide attempt at the Coming Out Ball.

There was a noise of a footfall behind him. Don Juan drew his shoulder blades down, forcing his spine straighter. No one else had followed him up here, of course — it could only be him. His stomach pooled with dread, but there was a flicker of something beneath it. What was it that made Samuel Griffith follow him into the shadows, after he'd cut him off so unceremoniously in December? I was waiting for you, he heard in Griffith's voice somewhere deep in his head. I think that is why I can never leave you. The dynamic between the two of them was rife with parallels to Don Juan's relationship with the drug. Sometimes he hated it, sometimes he obsessed over it. Sometimes it nearly killed him. Sometimes it ruined his life — always he was still pulled to it. Griffith had put himself in a position of authority over Don Juan back in December, at the beginning, but by the end the roles had clarified; he was an addict too, as much as Don Juan was. They were destroying each other, and neither of them could stop in any meaningful way.

Except Don Juan had stopped. He was sober now. Not under his own power, and some days his sobriety still felt tenuous and fragile, but... this was over. There was no reason he should have run from Griffith tonight, except habit.

He rolled his shoulders back and turned to look at the other man, face full of bravado. "Evening."

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   Samuel Griffith

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The wind coming towards the castle from the dark mountains crept into his jacket and he shuddered, but it was not the cold that lit up his nerves all along his spine; an ugly sleeping thing, like a roach, moved in its hiding place and scratched along the inside of his skull-form containment.

Samuel Griffith stopped at the entrance of the platform and stood very still. Don Juan strained to straighten his shoulders and turned to face him.

"Evening, Don Juan," Samuel replied and took out a cigarette, investigating his own intent with suspicion. His first impulse, he believed, had been to protect this place from invasion. That made little sense now; it was too late. Furthermore, it was he who blocked the door that would see Don Juan go back down the winding stairs and out into the corridors, where the presence of other people would prevent Samuel from talking to him—or from attempting anything similarly unwise. Why he would even want to, he did not know. It was not good that their paths crossed, least of all here. But his mind, as soon as he spotted his face in the doorway, accepted the notion of following him as the necessary consequence. To what end? He did not know. That unsettled him.

"This is no good place for you," he informed him, "if your plan was to evade me."

He wondered for a moment if he still carried the silver bird. Samuel could have prevented it from returning to Don Juan when it brought his letters—letters hidden and unanswered, but not destroyed. A bird, lent and not taken back. Samuel felt his shoulders tensing; looking at it like that told a narrative he did not like. He should leave, or make him leave. In the rooms below the platform under their feet, someone was waiting for him. Samuel took a drag of the cigarette. He did not smoke around her. She did not like it, or he assumed so.

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Content Warning Listen, I'm not even really sure what to call this. It just feels like a post that wants a content warning. Intrusive thoughts, flashbacks/trauma memories, vague allusions to sexual assault, I suppose

Being called by his first name was jarring. Griffith had done it before, yes, but it hit different in the open air of a virgin night than it did in the close quarters of the Whitechapel laboratory with their senses half abandoned. You called friends and lovers by their first name, or children. Don Juan preferred patronizing to familiar; it seemed to him that there was less danger in Griffith claiming superiority than intimacy. Either way, he thought Griffith had chosen his words with intention and wanted to see their impact — he made an effort to keep his features impassive. His palms itched. He wanted something in his hands, but was put off the idea of smoking by the fact that he would be mirroring the professor if he did.

His next words created another knot of dread in his stomach. Griffith knew him too well, Don Juan thought. There was no hiding anything from him, no bravado, no clean way out of this conversation. Then he thought, somewhat small: but why evading him? It had been what he was doing, on instinct, but why would Griffith have assumed it? He didn't know Don Juan was clean, or that he was trying to turn his life around. The last Samuel Griffith had seen of him he was a desperate addict wallowing in an abandoned house, begging for another hit. Griffith was the one who had left, abruptly and without explanation. If either of them should be assumed to be running away, he was the more fitting candidate.

Maybe there was more to his words. It echoed another of their past encounters. This is no good place for you if your plan was to evade me, tonight. If you're looking to get away from me, you might want to run a little farther, then. He didn't think Don Juan's aim was to avoid him; he thought he'd retreated up the astronomy tower stairs as a type of bait, because he was the sort of man who needed to be chased in order to live with himself. To pretend there was distance between himself and the choices he made. And you can pretend there is no part of you that wants it. Griffith was saying it aloud to make him acknowledge it. It would be hard to argue, if that was Griffith's contention — climbing the tower was a nonsensical move if he was tying to get away, when there was a party a stone's throw from where he'd been that offered social cover in spades. Maybe it would be hard to convince himself, too, after the fact. What had he been thinking in the snap second decision where he'd turned back to the tower instead of out to the ball? Had some part of him known Griffith would follow?

Griffith didn't know he was sober. He likely expected that he was desperate, and that his veneer of defiance would crack quickly under the weight of his craving. Griffith would expect him to beg. The scene flashed through his head, one iteration of how it could happen. Don Juan licking Griffith's cheek; a way to communicate I'll do anything. Griffith's cigarette burning a spot on Don Juan's forearm, not because Griffith necessarily cared to hurt him but as a way to demonstrate to both of them that it was true.

He blinked the vision away. There was a vast space between the pair of them compared to the scene he'd just imagined, and he was deeply aware of every inch of it. He stood very still. How long had Griffith expected it would take him to get on his knees? Was he defying expectations yet?

"I came up for the view," he lied, not expecting the man to believe him. It wasn't the sort of lie that needed to be believed to be useful.

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"By all means," Samuel replied. "Don't let me distract you from what you came for."

He smoked and observed him, waiting to see if he would dare to turn his back to him to take in the scenery, or stay as he was and belie his words immediately. It was not hard to trap Don Juan in his own little games. Don Juan was ever the game player. And Samuel was always too willing to execute on a threat. They could not help themselves. Could they?

He had ample time since he vanished from Don Juan's life to reflect on their fatal attachment but was not exactly diligent in doing so. Perhaps he could not bear to inspect his memories. Or perhaps it was wiser to let sleeping things lie when he lacked the means to defeat them once the confrontation was there. It made no difference; in his dreams he was haunted, even though upon waking he barely recalled them; the feeling clung to him long after his morning walks. In his waking life, he pursued stability with a stoicism that was costly and draining to him. There had been no more experiments. Even his laboratory in his tower barely saw him. Samuel Griffith did what he was supposed to do and he tried to live as if nothing had happened at all. It had not seemed like there was another choice.

The cigarette burned in the dark, and the cold stars blinked above through the clouds that hurriedly passed them by. Even though he was doing nothing but standing, his heart picked up its pace. Caught between the urge to turn away and to come closer, he waited; he was uncertain for what — for Don Juan to turn his back and pretend to gaze at the mountains and canopy of the forest? He envisioned himself approaching the figure at the edge of the platform. To do what? What?

He thought about the distance down and the overgrown stone of the courtyard below. He raised his eyes up and looked at the stars.

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   Don Juan Dempsey

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Don Juan recognized the challenge for what it was. Was he bold enough to follow through on his lie? Brave enough to turn his back on this man? There was ostensibly no reason not to, and if pressed Don Juan wouldn't have been able to articulate any specific thing he was afraid might happen if he did. He just had an intuition that putting Griffith behind him was a bad idea. They had spent too many hours in the Whitechapel laboratory or the Orchid wearing the mantles of predator and prey; the instincts he had built up there were hard to shake. But what did he really expect to happen? Was it reasonable to think a man of Griffith's stature and age would sneak up on him and catch him unaware, particularly given how heightened Don Juan's anxiety was? If he did, what was the worst he could do? They were at his place of employment, a place filled with children. He wasn't going to do anything that might call attention to the pair of them, surely.

He stood for a moment, brow creased as he considered the other man. What's your game? he wondered, but Griffith's face gave away nothing. What was he expecting Don Juan to do? Not to beg, because they hadn't reached that part of the night yet. It came later, when the facades wore too thin to cover the urgency of need. But just now he had retreated up the tower stairs; Griffith presumed he was running and hoping to be chased. He would expect more of the same. Something defiant but not precisely no.

The stalemate had gone on too long. Don Juan turned, shoulders tense, towards the edge of the platform. The moment he broke his line of sight to Griffith a nervous thrill went down his spine. He didn't look at the trees or the hills or the stars, instead focusing all his attention on the task of getting out another cigarette.

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Don Juan eventually relented to his own performance and turned away. Samuel came closer, walking and looking at his back until he stood behind him. A few seconds passed. He walked past him until he arrived at the edge of the platform. Below their feet was the depth, and then there were the courtyard stones, now obscured by the night. Lights of windows and lanterns dotted the black canvas.

He turned his back to the precipice, which caused something in him to stir. Samuel turned his head and saw Don Juan nestle out a cigarette from its étui. A small flame lit up in the air over the scarred palm of the Professor and levitated idly in the dark. Samuel would not be surprised if Don Juan rejected it in an act of petulant defiance. But then again, he thought, even Don Juan must know that they had long crossed over the boundaries where anything like that could matter — what could they do that would not pale in comparison?

Nothing as easily accomplished. He lit another cigarette of his own, and still what gripped his insides since he first caught a glimpse of Don Juan's face again would not release him. For a moment he permitted the intrusive vision to play out in his mind, the thought that called to him from below: of gripping him by his collar and slowly pushing him over the balustrade. Of holding on and letting go.

He looked at him. He was not gaunt and pale anymore and appeared overall improved, his pupils wide in the dim light. Likely not on opium. And yet a faint smell of vomit clung to him. "Long night," Sam ascertained. "You seem changed," he added thoughtfully. It was true, but he was not yet certain what it meant.

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A flicker of movement from Griffith made Don Juan flinch almost imperceptibly, until he realized it was only a offer of a cigarette light. Done with a fancy bit of magic, which suited him. Griffith would like to do something difficult in place of something mundane, Don Juan thought. He only pretended at humility when it suited him; beneath the veneer he was terrifically proud of his perceived superiority over everyone and everything.

The offered flame was another test, Don Juan felt, like deciding whether or not to turn around. This one had less clear outcomes. It said something if Don Juan took the offer, and something else if he refused it, but what either was he wasn't sure. In some lights a gesture like this could bring a touch of intimacy to the conversation, having to lean in close to accept it. It would be an easy position to initiate contact, if Griffith wanted to grab him — or if he was trying to test his boundaries, still expecting that at some point he would crack and throw himself to Griffith to beg. Don Juan had another intrusive thought, imagined slipping his fingers under the cuff of the professor's shirt and sliding them down along his skin until he found the outline of the first scar. He imagined Griffith touching his face while he looked at him, hard and unblinking. Deciding what to do with him.

Don Juan hesitated long enough that the offer was withdrawn, and the movement was enough to shake him from his daydream and get him fishing out his own lighter to finish the cigarette. This was a dangerous place to be. This was dangerous company. But he didn't want to run away. (Maybe, a small voice inside him considered: maybe this was the same impulse that saw him pocketing the vial he'd been given at that party, despite knowing he couldn't take it. The same inexplicable drive that had brought him to the house party where another guest had nearly overdosed. He was sober, but maybe his self-destructive tendencies had never really been the fault of the drugs).

Coming off the heels of this thought, he couldn't help but scoff at Griffith's observation that he seemed changed. Not changed enough. "What were you expecting?"

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The offered flame was not taken, and when Sam let it extinguish, he could not help but smile at the fact that petulant defiance was still Don Juan's modus operandi; that much had not changed, and he wondered if he would ever break him of the habit — and if breaking him of it would require more cruelty or less, or both.

"I expected more tangible misery," he answered right away. He expected Don Juan to be back on the pipe the instant that the last dosage of the substance lost its effect. Even if he might have already been free of the physical addiction, he would have expected Don Juan to go back regardless.
Griffith smoked and observed him. No, he could not say that he appeared happier; his eyes looked no more carefree than they did on their first meeting at the dinner party. He was enjoying his life as little as any seasoned hedonist would; yet there were no signs of influence on him.
"You are sober," he theorized, and it was apparent in his voice that he was not certain if he believed this yet, nor was he certain if he approved.

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   Don Juan Dempsey

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Someone else may have taken offense to the line about tangible misery, but how could Don Juan possibly given the history the pair of them had? It was certainly an expectation in line with prior experiences. They both knew it. Don Juan had been getting flashes of it continuously through their interaction tonight, like a window into a parallel reality in which he'd never gotten clean. Perhaps Griffith had, too. Don Juan wondered, perversely, if any of their intrusive thoughts were intersecting — if they knew each other well enough for that. He had the feeling, distantly, that Dean would be disappointed in him, even though from an outside eye it might seem as though he had done nothing at all since Griffith ascended the stairs.

The word sober hit the air and Don Juan rolled his shoulders back slightly, reflexively standing a little taller. He felt he could be proud of this, or at least defiant about it, given that it stood in such strong contrast to what the other man had expected of him. Since January, he could have said, jutting out his chin... but if he said that Griffith would not hear it as for five months, a measure of longevity, he would hear it as since you. Suddenly admitting to it felt dangerous, as though acknowledging his sobriety would invite too much scrutiny of it. How would Griffith react if Don Juan confirmed it? He might be cruel, or dismissive — worst of all the possibilities Don Juan could envision, he might laugh. Don Juan wasn't sure he could survive that — was not sure his sobriety could survive Griffith.

"It's a kids' party," he said with a dismissive shrug, to dodge the question. It was clear from the way Griffith said it that he meant sober generally, not sober in the moment, but it was convenient to misunderstand. He didn't expect this to work, at least not without something else to serve as a distraction, so he added in a prodding way, "You don't bring your vices here."

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   Samuel Griffith

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"No, I do not," he said. "I am sober too." Don Juan's squared shoulders did not provoke him. He flicked the stump of his cigarette over the wall and watched it tumble into the dark. His gaze returned and focused on Don Juan's eyes. "I suppose congratulations are in order."

Suddenly Sam was aware of his body. It stood there, light and unburdened, in the dark on top of the tower. He could feel the air draped on his skin like a fabric he might be able to grip. He felt Don Juan an arm's length away from him, although they were not touching. His heart contracted in his chest and his blood expanded in his veins. It would take two steps to reach him, two seconds of struggle to send him flying; that was predictable and secure; perhaps it was what he wanted. For a moment they would be close. Space and boundaries would contract. There would be resistance, a fleeting state of weightlessness, and then it would be over. If he were to die, Sam thought, he would prefer it to happen in this sequence.

"All's well that ends well," Sam said, and he felt at peace with this shift in his mind, although he knew it ought to worry him. Whether impulse would flow over into action, he did not know, and strangely he felt that it did not concern him.

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He was sober, too. That statement was surprising enough that Don Juan looked back at him, though his expression wasn't exactly shock or disbelief. It might have been, except for the way Samuel Griffith was looking at him. There was something cold and predatory in his eyes, although his expression was drawn. The professor was not regarding him as a person, he felt sure, but as a means to an end. Precisely what end, he could not say... but if it was true that Griffith was sober, maybe had been since their last nights together, Don Juan could speculate. He could extrapolate what he might represent, what his sudden intrusion in a space otherwise reserved for the rest of his life might mean for a man in this position.

This felt very dangerous. It wasn't the first time Don Juan had that impression, but this time, while he held Griffith's gaze, he was unable to reason his way out of it. He couldn't convince himself he was being silly, or self-absorbed, or melodramatic. He shivered.

"I should go back," he said.

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