Made

He woke up with a jolt, dimly aware of the noise of the television. Laila was sitting on the floor beneath him. She had changed her clothes, and instead of an old pair of his jeans and a t-shirt, she was wearing a knee length dress. It was the most conservative thing of her own he had ever seen her in. Despite the open deep v of the chest, the sleeves came down past her elbows, and the material lacked any sort of sheer quality.

"You read my file," she said.

He groaned and stretched. He wasn't positioned properly for this conversation.

"How did you know?" he asked, sitting up. Laila turned off the television.

"It wasn't the same place I left it."

"You're observant."

"I have to be." He waited for her to say more, but she didn't elaborate.

"You've got quite a colorful history."

She turned around to face him. "I took some pages out."

Laila was a sight, crouched below him like that. Her mouth was slightly open, and her face was contorted in an emotion he couldn't quite put his finger on. He tried to envision himself as a character he'd played, as Erik, impressed with his new toy, or as Azazel, who simply liked watching chaos unfold, but was too exhausted.

"Why did you do those things?" he asked instead.

"I wanted to be something," she said. "I had the whole world spread out in front of me. What would I be if I didn't fuck it all up?"

He swallowed the lump in his throat that formed at her words. He was in way over his head, but something said to go deeper, to unsettle his little world.

"Nick didn't do that to you," he pressed.

"Nature versus nurture," she said. "We'll never know."

He smirked down at her, suddenly feeling the energy come back into him. "You're sick," he said.

She winked. "You'll learn to like it."

Looking back, he liked to say that was the moment that he fully understood their situation. He'd been thinking of playing the villain, being the main baddie with a little eye candy on the side. He thought that was the role she'd needed him to play. But he realized then that she was the villain, the terrible person with nothing to redeem them, and he was just along for the ride.
He'd seen people fuck everything up when he was younger, watched them squander away the opportunities that they had. He'd watched drugs rip families apart, saw people he knew from school out on the streets. It was rare, but he'd seen it, heard whispers of addiction and death behind the church. He'd always wondered what it'd be like to destroy his life, to take everything that he had and squander it away for some hidden evil masquerading as something good. He liked the double edged sword of losing control.
But below him was a girl who just gave it all up, who ruined things just for the sake of it. Who liked the destruction she caused, and wasn't ashamed of it. The demure little girl she'd been playing was an act. He'd met the real her, and she headbutted him in a bar.

He grinned, leaning down to kiss her on the top of her head. She smelled like peaches and alcohol, and leaned into his touch, gripping his leg tightly.

"What pages did you take out?" he murmured into her ear. She chuckled.