My Lonely Room

So, it isn't really a song fic, but "Dreaming of You" always reminded me of Camille and Magnus' breakup for some reason. This is what came of that idea. I hope that you enjoy.

Camille

It was a bitter realisation that he had failed to acknowledge I was even there. I watched him try to mingle with the other party guests as if he ever really fit in with the upper classes. I saw that he was as happy as he had always seemed to be with me. Only he was without me.

It had never really bothered me, loosing Magnus Bane. It was the rejection, the rejection by him, which was unbearable. My still heart could have contracted watching him laugh with the other Downworlders. The sound of it tore shreds away from the facade I had created in telling myself that he depended on me. I once thought that it was safe to believe that. After all, Magnus had lived in my home, hadn't he? Had he not used my body? Did he not love me?

Watching him there was an eye opening reminder that the Warlock had survived a few hundred years before we met. He did not need me, perhaps he never did. And I needed...

I don't know what I needed.

I made a game of watching Magnus that night. When he would move, cautiously I would move. I chattered and flirted my way into the best vantage points. I was still Lady Belcourt. Beautiful. Envied by each woman born with a skin or hair colour thought to be out of fashion, coveted by every male rendered tongue tied in my presence. They didn't know how I had been scorned. They thought what anybody would think: that I had done away with a penniless half-breed toy.

They didn't know the pain or the longing I felt deep in the part of me which was alive. Not the alive which made me a dead vessel walking but the alive that made the blood ignite in my veins even when I remained ice cold; that which made me feel breathless though I did not need air. Alive as every distraction of a lover made me feel. I was rarely without one to make me feel this way. I wouldn't look into the mirror and see something hollow. Not again.

Please, never again.

Magnus had left me feeling oddly empty. I was alone without him there. It was absurd because I had replaced men I'd truly loved in less time, some before I had even ended my relationships with them. But I lost him and I was alone. I couldn't help but wonder what magic he'd performed to make me dwell on him so, though I suspected it had a lot more to do with the man who I had lost before him.

I did know what I needed after all.

Lady Belcourt? Lady Belcourt?

The name of whoever was speaking to me remains a mystery. It could easily have been any of the small group; one of two men dressed just as I remembered the men in France had when I had last visited years before or a woman who had been turned young and looked much too girlish for her full length gown. It didn't matter when I heard Magnus voice and the room began to spin a little. Lost in my thoughts I had forgotten the game.

Madame, do you feel faint?

His proximity was too much and I excused myself more hastily than I like to think about. People parted like the sea as I ghosted along the marble floor. I heard nothing but the click of my own heels as I tried to keep up my nonchalant appearance. I didn't chance a glance back before my exit. In my mind's eye I saw Magnus watching me with that intense and curious gaze of his; I then imagined him smirking, then piteous. Finally: unaffected.

None of the ways I could imagine he would look at me were satisfying. The only way I was happy to think of him was with me. Not beside me or across the room from me. I needed to be looked at the way he used to look at me.

After losing my Mr Scott, my love of loves, I had needed Magnus to be somebody who wouldn't go away. I had needed him to stay and he had left. I needed him to be mine. How twisted a thought, when I didn't even want to be his.

Magnus

In Woolesy's strong grip I couldn't move while he trailed torturous nips along my bare abdomen. I shuddered when I felt his lips smirk against the spot where my navel would have been. His hot breath heated my skin.

My hands had been restrained when my shirt was ripped off. They were now tied to the sconce above my head in such a way that I couldn't snap my fingers and free myself. When I tugged futilely at the knot I heard him chuckle. I didn't know how he'd managed to secure a knot like that so quickly. The wolf certainly wasn't least experienced of the mortals I'd slept with.

When his lips crushed into mine I wrapped my legs – still clothed – around his frame. His shirt hung open, if nothing else reminding me that it had been so long since I'd last been with another man. It was a big change from the sultry evenings spent indulging in all that was Camille; intoxicated by her expensive Parisian scent. Not that we had been mild, on the contrary, there had been passion there. But with Camille it had been love making, and with Woolsey it was...

I moaned when he bit roughly into my shoulder.

It wasn't right; I knew. I felt as if I'd done something wrong by coming freshly from her bed into the arms of the remaining Scott brother. What would Camille think if she saw us together? Had I crossed some kind of line? It seemed that way. I might have told Woolsey to end it right then and there if I could conjure up in my wildest imagination an image of her being hurt by me. Not the way she had left me hurt.

But it just wouldn't do to keep thinking of her with another person's hands all over me. I was in this situation for the distraction. I didn't want to think about her cool skin against me while the room was heating up. When he growled at me the melodic sounds she made shouldn't have mattered...

Hey, what are you thinking about?

It took me a few moments to realise Woolsey had actually spoken out loud. Then I blinked and realised that he had. He was looking me right in the eyes and waiting for my answer.

I didn't have the slightest idea how long I'd been looking right through him but in that time he'd let go of me. Now his hands leant against the wall behind my head, rendering me more trapped than before.

I didn't know what to say to him. Nobody wants to hear that you were thinking about your ex while you were with them. I opted for silence.

"Her again?" He said in an accusatory voice. Of course, I had no rebuttal. Nothing to say.

The seconds which followed were intense. We could have stood there for a minute or a year; without the tell-tale ticking of a clock I could hardly tell how long it was before the Lycanthrope exhaled a sigh. Soon my arms were free and I found myself sliding to the floor. I don't mind telling you that I was feeling sorry for myself; apparently useless to my lover once again. Maybe it was something about the English climate, I wondered, elsewhere I wasn't known to disappoint.

He crouched beside me in the canine manner most Wolves had after turning. All I could say was sorry in a voice which was hoarser than I would have liked. It was embarrassing, really. I wasn't usually so off-form and I didn't mean to be so offensive and ignorant towards him.

"I don't know what the matter with me is." I offered by way of explanation, even though it didn't explain anything.

"She's trouble, Magnus, she makes people obsessed." Woolsey complained. He couldn't hide his bitterness towards her and I wondered how his brother had been with her. Infatuated, I guessed absentmindedly. It seemed the only way to be with her.

When Woolsey shifted to sit against the wall beside me and I felt awful when my only real thought was about how he was completely graceless compared with Camille. I internally scolded myself to focus on what he'd said. Because he was right. The woman was obsession itself; like a potent opiate.

That meant that it only felt like I needed her.

I pushed Woolsey back onto the floor with newfound determination. I'd do just fine without her. I would try, at the very least.

Two people sat alone that evening, in separate rooms in separate houses; not long after separating from one another. Both saw the same stary London sky and remembered the same event. The two of them embracing in a garden looking up at those stars on one of the many dates they had shared by nightfall.

Camille had looked dazzling to Magnus with her hair, her skin, her jewels, reflecting the moonlight. She positively glowed. Camille had loved how Magnus was foreign, exotic, exciting. With the eyes of a predator.

Camille and Magnus had loved like the flame of a match, they flared brightly, burned hot... Went out in moments.

And the temptation to strike up another was great but not worth burning your fingers over.