"All enclaves that have been around for long enough will eventually start building a stash of useful things for themselves. Mana included," he adds, tapping a little watch-like device attached to his wrist, its clock-like face on the inner rather than outer part of his wrist.

"Yes. But we'll just ignore that for the moment, because in this bright and shining point in time I don't actually want to yell at you about things that aren't your fault. Not until you've gotten me to the workshop and back, at least."

"And here I thought we were having so much fun with the yelling. Well, I'll stop inflicting my presence on you, then."

"Cheers. I'll find you at supper, unless your bodyguards are inclined to shoot on sight."

"I'm the one guarding, remember?" he says, raising an eyebrow, but he offers a two-finger salute and runs along.

At supper, Lex clears his throat. "Liu, mind if I sit?"

"—sure." She's not exactly alone, but she's in a corner of a table of mostly Mandarin-speakers, the outcast corner. "I saw your door earlier," she adds, the question implicit.

"The work of the astonishing Scorpius Lake! The boy is a menace. But I bullied him into taking me down to workshop after dinner so I can pick up some scrap for make-and-mend. Unfortunately he prevented me from singlehandedly killing a soulstealer by killing it before I could. Utter bastard."

This is certainly the most cheerful Liu has ever seen Lex. It's not a high bar to clear, but he's doing some serious gymnastics to get this far over it.

...she is really not sure what fraction of that she believes!

"I'm happy for you," is what she goes with, sounding uncertain.

"...thanks," he says, sounding mildly surprised. "How, um, was your day."

Wait no she didn't mean to sound friendly abort abort.

"Went fine," she says, vaguely enough, and doesn't elaborate.

Okay, back to normal. Liu's good people. She doesn't hate him, she's just a normal sensible person who doesn't want to get involved with whatever bullshit high he's on.

He nods and turns to his (awful) food. He feels sick again, but he can't skip two meals in a day. God, what is this. Alfredo? Why is the Scholomance trying to produce alfredo. Are those peas or mal eggs -

he really can't afford to skip another meal -

he stands up and slings his bag over his shoulder and picks up his tray and strides over to the trash and dumps it in. Takes the tray over to the conveyor.

Heads towards New York, hunger gnawing at his gut and completely irrational frustration grinding his teeth together.

New York is actually so collectively shocked he even dared to approach (plus terrified of his constant aura of doom) that they don't manage to collect their collective wits in time to do anything about it.

Except for Lake, who is sporting a somewhat confused grin as he watches the dark sorcerer-to-be come over.

Lex smirks at the horrified looks on their faces. It's almost kind of satisfying.

"Lake," he says, inclining his head. "I know I'm early for an after-dinner run, but I didn't have much of an appetite. You up for it, or should I take a seat and wait for you to finish?"

    "Two of them now?" is the first words anyone says, then—a boy, another junior like them, sitting three seats away from Scorpius himself. "Going for some kind of record, Lake?"

"Magnus, you wound me; two is definitely not my record," Scorpius replies, grinning more widely. People giggle and Magnus blushes and stammers at that—they are teenagers—but Scorpius is still focusing on Lex. "Sure, give me a minute and I'll join you."

From everyone's confusion it seems like Scorpius didn't tell anyone about his little stunt in Lex's room, either.

"Oh, I heard about that actually - did you murder his door too, while you were staying the night?"

"No, that honor fell to a kvenlik." Scorpius finishes cleaning his plate up, grabs an apple, and starts getting up.

    "Wait, you're actually going?" asks a girl that had been sitting next to him, looking alarmed. "Why? You know he's a—"

"He's not a maleficer," replies Scorpius immediately, before softening. "I'll be fine, Chloe. I'm just paying a debt."

        "A debt?" asks Magnus, looking outraged.

"Yeah." And without further elaboration, he starts leading the way out.

Lex falls into step. "I like that. Very confident. You're aware I could just prefer the taste of mice to chewing on my headboard?"

"No blackened nails or eyes that flash white or any of the other telltale signs, if you want to know the objective criteria I am basing my intuitions on, here." He doesn't turn around to look at Lex but he does look at him from the sides of his eyes. "But maybe I'm just reckless."

"Maybe, he says." Lex shrugs. "So, I heard about what you did with your new boytoy in gruesome detail, but I didn't hear anything about him otherwise. What catches Scorpius Lake's eye? The most I heard was that he's a year younger, someone wondered if that appealed and someone else said everything appeals to you, which I have to say doesn't sound implausible in the general case but somehow I think they were wrong in this one."

"The only way in which they could be wrong in this one case is if you misunderstand what it means for everything to appeal to me."

Scorpius barely watches where he's walking. He doesn't even have his hands free; they're holding each other behind his back, and for all his casualness he could be going on a merry walk in the park. Definitely nothing in his demeanor to indicate that what he's doing instead is walking down the hallways of this not-quite-geometrically-consistent death trap of a school at night, just before curfew, with every mal and mal-to-be surely just waiting in the corners to attack one or two unsuspecting juniors for an easy meal.

"Ah, of course. There could be no subtext to the statement that you get off on hooking up with a sophomore, such as that you want a lover who looks up to you rather than one who thinks of you as a person, or that you want someone who knows less than you so you can show off, or that you want someone who isn't as strong as you so you can - well. Impress him."

"...Lex, everyone is important. Everyone is special. Everyone has a reason why they deserve to be loved and cherished and wanted and desired and protected. And I'm not going to go ahead now and say something callous like 'even you'. Yes, you, of course, because you're a person, curséd though your existence may be." He does look over his shoulder at Lex, now—the madman, absolutely ignorant of whatever he's walking towards and acting like that's not begging for something to jump them. "I could tell you all about the things that make Edmund special, at least the things I think he would be okay with me telling you about. And I could do the same about everyone else I know, everyone else I know well enough at least. I could tell you about the things that make you special.

"That's what it means for everything—for everyone—to appeal to me."

"That is adorable. You're like an American cartoon about friendship except it's about fucking people and developing inappropriate attachments and getting yourself killed."

And fuck you for claiming to care about me! 

"Anyway, maybe everyone appeals but I was right to say that asshole was wrong anyway, it's not about him being younger than you at all. Nyeh."

Scorpius laughs and turns his gaze forward once more. "And you don't eat mice," he adds. "And when Jack Westing, all smiles and blondness and blue eyes and all-American charm, decided to drain Luisa of her life, you killed him for it, before I could get to him. And you didn't take a single drop of his malia."