"He's insufferably brilliant, but you have to be if you want a scholarship to Valentine."

"You are in terrible danger of inflating my ego."

"Maybe I should get some tutoring from you, then, not being insufferably brilliant myself."

"Not even in your STEM? I am honestly surprised."

"I'm probably alright at the sciences," he concedes. "But that was flirting. You know, suggesting more opportunities for us to spend some time one-on-one in which I get to admire your intellect and personality?"

"Ah, I see. Perhaps you desire my tutoring in Latin? Catullus, and other men of that kidney."

"No one has used the phrase men of that kidney unironically in at least eighty years."

"Damn. But I like it."

"What kidney exactly is this, was it a shared one or. ...I really should stop shitposting aloud like that, that's Viv—a friend's remit, not mine."

"Anyone who shared a kidney with Catullus would regret it. What with the drinking and whoring."

"I'm calling you there. We're not reciting Catullus 16 at the breakfast table."

This is a face of extreme displeasure.

Pete sporfles and covers his lips and nose so that he can try to get his coughing laughter under control.

"May I please change the topic."

"Yes, sir," he says between coughs, "so long as we put a pin on that suggestion for later."

"I should be happy to. Just as I should be happy to put-"

"Anyway! Pete, tell me about your Viv. Quickly."

"You but delay the inevitable," he says in a low voice, shaking his head and grinning. "Viv is one of my best friends. She dances on the tightrope between butch lesbian and transmasc and the highest calling in her life is making sure no one around her has a moment of peace in their lives. She, ah—" Pause. "When I was first exploring the, ah... idea... that I may not, altogether, all the time, be the most masculine man alive, she was one of the first people I told this to. She's as close to me as my sister is."

"I'm sure nothing about making sure no one has a moment of peace made it into your expression of that femininity, either," Edmund smirks.

"She sounds lovely. She is across the Atlantic, I imagine - do you keep in contact? I suppose it has not been so very long since you arrived."

"It hasn't, no. And actually, you know the employee at that café you took me to, Niamh I think was her name? There was a certain je ne sais quoi to her that kept reminding me of Viv. Very different gender expression but suggesting dropping scalding tea onto one's privates was very much something Viv would do too."

"It was very something. She gives me déjà vu like anything - I had a mate who talked just like that back in primary school and I keep wondering, you know, is that just how... some..."