"—what, of the enclavers in here? Very much not, thank you."

"How does your mother feel about that?"

"Can't say I rightly know, I made a point of burning every note she sent me via freshmen," he replies brightly.

"Clever! But I think you do know - I'm not asking what she says about it. Do you have a plan for when you get out and have to live under her thumb again? Planning to make your escape and live the independent life? Run away with one of your favorites?"

"Well, you see," he replies neutrally, almost casually, "maleficaria aren't endemic to the Scholomance. There are in fact a fair number of them out there, the whole reason we're sent in here as kids is to have a higher survival rate from them than we would outside." Which obviously Lex knows, but Scorpius isn't stating the obvious just to be obnoxious. "New York will be fine, they can deal with any mals that come their way. There are lots of other people who won't be fine, though, independents and kids and whatnot, and I am so very good at killing mals."

"A hunter. Or perhaps a guardian angel. Saving the world, one life at a time."

Dripping with venom.

"Going to try to be a bit more efficient than that. Go after the big ones." He side-eyes Lex again and adds, "I bet someone who can lay waste to multitudes could do even better than me, though."

Lex grits his teeth until he can feel it in his eardrums.

"Probably could. Unfortunately, unlike you I am a human being, which means I don't want to spend the rest of my life, what, driving the Mystery Inc van and vaporizing argonets? Fun as a hole in the head."

His gaze snaps back ahead, but he's still smiling. "And what do you want to spend the rest of your life doing, then?" Fair's fair.

"Your mother."

Then he hisses out a breath and points a finger at a lurking ooze and mutters something that lowers the temperature around him by a couple of degrees and makes the mal no longer exist.

"I want to live, alright? I want to survive and live in the fucking lap of luxury, eating real food and drinking wine from the bottle and never having to think about where I'm from or especially where I'm going. I want to be the kind of bastard who gets called in when the other bastards got eaten, because then you get called in less and they pay you more when they do, and says three words in French and the problem's solved. And I don't want anything from you."

"Sounds fair enough to me," he says, somehow not buying it for a second. "I'm afraid if I see more situations in which I feel like my intervention is necessary to ensure that you do get to live to fulfil your dreams I will feel compelled to act, but I probably understand the tools at your disposal well enough by now to have a better idea of when that is."

"You're Goddamn right. I can do anything."

His body picks this time to brown out his vision, because he has not eaten in twelve hours except for an apple. His ankle turns as he's getting onto the bottom step, and he almost (but doesn't) fall over.

"Fuck."

And just as you'd expect, the school hero is absolutely there holding him steady. He doesn't say anything, and just stays there for a second to check on Lex.

Another advantage of being Scorpius Lake is getting the luxury to ever stop walking in the middle of a Scholomance hallway.

Lex looks... bad.

His clothes hang off him in the way a lot of people's do here, but moreso. His belt is on an extra notch drilled in three down from where its notches are supposed to end. His cheeks aren't quite hollow, but they're flat. His trousers end an inch up from ankles that look truly disturbing.

He shoves Scorpius away and doesn't wobble about it. "Fuck off, so I tripped." He starts back up the stairs.

Scorpius lingers for a second before following, eyes on the steps rather than on Lex. "If you're going to die," he murmurs, somewhat subdued, "at least die to a decent mal. Don't just be a dick to yourself until you get picked off by a scratcher or something like that."

Lex's hands are shaking in white-knuckled fists. He hisses in a breath through his nose.

"There are worse ways to die," he says in a quiet, dangerous voice.

Scorpius barks a bitter laugh with not a drop of humour. "I know. I've witnessed some of them."

Lex doesn't talk the rest of the way back to his room.

Once they get to his poor abused door, he slaps one metal sheet on either side of the hole and sticks them in place with a few quick words. Then he picks up the knobs from each side - they didn't melt completely, just melted off the door itself and picked up some finger-shaped dents - and presses them to the metal.

He says his make-and-mend in Welsh, knocking on the metal and the wood with irritable precision, and the excess sheet metal slurps into the hole with a disturbingly organic noise. He tests the knob. It works, though it's clicky.

"We're square," Lex says without looking Lake in the eye. "Tools?"

He offers them to Lex wordlessly, but he does—sort of seek Lex's gaze. Out of excessive zeal, perhaps, as he's pretty sure Lex will be okay, to the extent this is possible, but still.

Lex catches his eye inadvertently and looks very irritated about it.

"Was there something you wanted," he bites out.

...pretty much that, yeah. He'll be fine.

"No, nothing. Sorry, uh, again, about your door." He hikes a thumb in the direction of his room. "I'm gonna go. Good night, Lex."

"Night, Lake."

So off he goes back to his room, finally having some time to chew through—through this whole day.

Edmund has had quite a day.

Breakfast with Scorpius was - nice, actually. New York was mostly superficially polite, presumably on the assumption that he was a boytoy to be dropped inside of the week but that was no reason to piss off London. (Magnus asked "so, you're the catch of the day, huh?" Edmund had turned to Scorpius and asked, brightly, "Oh, are you promiscuous? Am I not your first and only love? Am I only a fleeting fancy?" until Magnus had made a disgusted noise and turned back to his food.)

Lunch was with his own enclave. Nigel hissed "are you familiar with the concept of notifying your mates before you spend the night with some flash bastard from New York?" and he made the least sincere apology that had ever come out of his mouth; it wasn't as if that was his intent, anyway.

Peter had come to lunch for once. Sat down with a little plate of cupcakes and offered one to him. "What's this for," Edmund had asked, and Peter said "oh, am I not supposed to know?" And Edmund made a face and said "I'd really feel better if you didn't, yeah." And everyone had snickered, and he'd taken the cupcake anyway because you just don't turn down a cupcake.

And at dinner, Scorpius... and Lex... left early. For a supply run.

What the fuck.

"Flighty bastard, isn't he," Nigel grunted. "Soz, Ed."

"I'm less concerned about that than the fact he's fucking around with maleficers," Edmund replied.

But - he couldn't exactly say anything to Scorpius, without following him and probably getting maleficed himself. So he left dinner at an appropriate time, and now he's back in his room, where the maintenance request he put in that morning has been filled. His door's back on its hinges, or maybe another door is, he can't tell. The air is filled with a faint smell of lavender, rather than that of monster mélange.

Edmund sits at his desk and wonders what the fuck is happening in his life.

Scorpius sleeps like the dead. He hadn't been lying when he told Edmund he doesn't usually need that much of it, but he did spent the previous night up fighting off maleficaria and then ran the whole day pretending it was fine because, well, he does in fact think some of his image is important. Something something if everyone believes he's invincible that can only help him actually be invincible something.

But by the time he gets back to his room after the late night supply room with their local doomsbringer he's been running on fumes, and he finally lets out an enormous yawn he's been holding back all day. Suddenly not having anything to do or anyone to save means his exhaustion is catching up to him painfully quickly, and his bed sings an irresistible siren song to him. He sets his usual shields up, gets into his bed and is off like a light not one minute later.

When his alarm wakes him up, he stays in bed for a bit, staring at his ceiling and wondering why he thinks going upstairs to the sophomores' level would be a great idea right now. He never did promise Edmund anything, they never even kissed, and he has as many fleeting friendships as there are people, here. Flighty bastard indeed, but it's still as genuine as it's cultivated. He cares about every single person here, and he helps them however he can, and most of the time it's just killing mals but sometimes it's giving them a shoulder to cry on or smacking them up the head about how actually lack of social simulation can be as deadly as a digester or telling them to actually eat some damn food for Pete's sake.

And yet...

And yet.

He's still feeling emotionally buzzed after yesterday. Lex was... he was a ride. Scorpius wants to go on that ride again, but he's sure Lex himself won't appreciate the company, not this morning.

Edmund probably will, though, and for some damn reason that makes him feel giddy. Fucking Pevensies, man, but whatever, he can try to rationalize it in his head or psychoanalyze himself as much as he wants but he has to recognize that in the end of the day he always just does whatever he feels like doing. And what he feels like doing is knocking on Edmund's door with two breakfast trays balanced precariously on his arms and a grin on his face.