Eyes closed are not sufficient to block the flash of light, and although maybe whatever was coming for him would in fact have been the type of thing that could have emitted said flash of light just before killing and eating him, he finds himself remarkably uneaten after the flash is gone.

Then he finds himself forcefully grabbed, dragged back in the direction of his own room, and shoved inside somewhat unceremoniously.

"What the fuck," are Scorpius Lake's first words to him after having saved his life for the fourth time.

Edmund opens his eyes, blinking away spots. Stares at his savior.

Fuck.

"...you patrol at night?" he asks, stupidly.

Scorpius turns around, then, now that he has confirmed that Edmund is in fact still possessed of (some of) his wits and has not in fact been literally possessed by anyone or anything else, and shuts the door after casting a couple of spells under his breath. Then he turns back to look at the sophomore.

"Sometimes. When I'm bored. Or can't sleep. I really don't need that much sleep. Your turn to answer."

"I..."

He is absolutely unequipped to answer this question. He sits heavily on the floor. "I'm sorry."

Scorpius runs a hand through his lack of hair and slides onto the floor, more slowly, dropping into a cross-legged seat. "...Edmund, right. Peter and Susan's little brother. Creative writing track."

He flinches at their names. "...yeah. Creative writing."

"Peter... told me not to thank you when you save my life. He's usually right. So. Sorry."

A little strangled giggle escapes Scorpius's throat before he rubs that same hand against his face. "He gave me a gift the first time I got something out of his way. And the second. It was vexing." He lowers his hand and looks at Edmund again. "I'm just... trying to think if I should have anticipated this. Usually kids with family here don't... don't. It really does suck in here, doesn't it."

"It's... very, yeah, not my favorite place in the world. Or out of it."

He doesn't engage with the implicit question. Maybe most kids with family here don't; he did.

"Creative Writing is nice. Just kind of wish I was taking it at Eton or someplace."

Scorpius runs a hand against his scalp, again. A nervous tic, maybe. "I don't, don't really know how to do this. There's not much point? It's usually more obvious than, than this was, so usually I..." Let them, he doesn't say. "The part of me that was raised by my mother wants to apologize to you but every other part of me wants—" He shakes his head. "Something else."

"...apologize for saving my life, you mean."

A corner of his lips twitches. "Yes, I do mean."

"Well. I... accept your apology... but I think that the rest of you is probably on the right track. I guess it probably wants to pick me up and shake me until all the idiot comes out."

He giggles again, a little bit less strangled this time. "Almost word-for-word what I was thinking."

"Would that it were so easy. I've tried half a dozen times to just... forget about it. My affinity's great for utility, but it can't quite manage that."

"Should I assume your affinity is not water-weaving, then?"

"Ha. I bet it looks that way, doesn't it? No, I do memory. Write, rewrite, erase. It's saved my life more times than you have, I think."

He raises both of his eyebrows. "Was there anything specific you wanted to forget?"

"I was a linguistically inclined child. By the time my parents caught on I had scraps of Spanish, Italian, Japanese... Dad traumatized me out of languages, but my seat was in serious jeopardy until I got my first mana spurt and ripped them out by, heh, the roots."

"Is my name an infohazard, then?"

"I've got Latin and Greek. You've got to have something, even for creative."

He grins for a second but then gets more serious again. "I feel intensely selfish asking this, but... Are you going to try again? Should I just... get out of your way?"

"This is the first real conversation I've had in three months."

Scorpius chokes on his spit and has to spend a few seconds recovering his breath. "Three months? You—how about your enclave, your siblings?"

"My enclave - Nigel's the only one who gives a shit and he doesn't really, even, he gives a shit about me because he knows without me he'd have no one, and Ella and Adrian are a clave within the clave. And. I can't talk to Peter. It's almost the end of term. And he'd, he'd drop what he's doing in a second, he'd let a sword cool brittle if I walked into shop, he'd kill himself to get me out of this funk. I can't talk to Peter. And Susan - Susan's lucky, she's got a million allies, but I know she's working herself to the bone keeping them together because she's Susan and she'd never let herself let go of one. And - it's all more important than me. And if I tried to talk to anyone else it'd be - politics or charity - not real."

"Do you think they would agree that it's all more important than you?"

"People's lives are on the line every day here. Me not - not getting enough enrichment - doesn't rate."

"...I have no idea how to explain how wrong you are, but perhaps more to the point is the fact that 'lack of enrichment' was what put your own life on the line, here," he says, air quoting the expression.

"Dammit, Edmund Five Minutes Ago."

Scorpius laughs then starts to say something but immediately jumps to his feet and casts a wordless hum of an incantation to blast the ooze that had just started to leak through the gap between the door and the floor.

"Fucking hell I thought my spell was going to hold for longer than that," he says, and almost as if to punctuate his statement a dome of energy around the two of them buzzes into visibility as a moonflapper drops onto it from above. It starts pecking at the energy barrier and he says something in French that causes a beam of electricity to shoot from his eyes at the creature, overloading its metal carcass and frying it from the inside.

Edmund squeaks involuntarily, then hops to his feet. "Come on, go, get back to your deranged night patrol - I'll be fine, go -"

The junior shoots two beams of hyperconcentrated heat at two more maleficaria before they can even hit the dome of energy surrounding them and laughs in a somewhat manic way when he processes Edmund's suggestion.

"I do not think you realise—" There's a loud thump from the door as something slams bodily against it. "Do you even have a good enough shield spell to hold the fort while I try to leave through the hordes amassing outside?" Scorpius asks lightly and, "Glacial," he cries in a French accent, freezing another ooze-like creature that had just jumped from a hiding spot in a shelf up above to try to glomp them. The mals that come from above all seem to slide sort of lamely off the barrier spell like its surface is coated in some slippery substance, and after this fourth one drops onto the floor something punches through Edmund's drain to grab its frozen corpse to eat it. "I'm afraid you're stuck with my charming presence for the night."

Edmund looks - almost relieved.

"Um. I can shield, but I probably can't shield well enough to hold off an army, you're right. Should I even be participating in this siege - I know you're kind of a demigod, here -"

"You should not!" he says brightly, sending three targeted fireballs at more stuff dropping from the vent and then one jolt of energy down the drain. "Your job for tonight will be to sit there looking pretty and if you want to call me nice names like 'demigod' you should save it for when you actually want to flirt with me." He whirls around and sends a jet of semi-solid energy in a straight horizontal line along the bottom of the door where a strange purple smoke had started coming from. Said smoke is immediately absorbed by the semi-solid blob of energy and crystallizes it into a thin layer of glassy material on the floor.

Also he's glowing now. That's a thing that's happening. Faintly, mostly concentrated around the eyes, but getting more noticeable the more mals he kills.

"- you're gaining mana from this?"

"Sure am!" Blast. "Another way in which the universe wants to incentivize me to kill as many mals as I possibly can." Blast blast the door shakes but doesn't quite get loose from its hinges—yet. "Whatever's on the other side is getting impatient, huh? That's going to be a fun one."

"Maybe it's an argonet. Are argonets also fun."

"Ooh haven't found a big one of those in a while, that would be fun!"

Depending on how Edmund feels about demigods, the way Scorpius seems to also be growing increasingly manic may or may not affect that description. At one point he steps outside the energy dome, lays a hand flat on it, and burns, the entire shield surrounded by fire for two solid seconds. When he steps back inside he says, "Gaseous little assholes were trying to get into your fabrics." The fabrics themselves, clothes and bedding, only got lightly singed.

"Oh. Well, thank you for the fire."

Edmund seems content to watch in starry-eyed awe for quite some time. He does start shifting uncomfortably after a while.

This is gonna be all night, probably; the Scholomance really, really frowns upon students rooming together. It fucks with the incentives, if it lets people just sleep in shifts. The kids who are too socially incompetent would become even bigger targets, for one, since the others would be bunking in threes and fours, sleeping in shifts and covering each other, and that's not to mention seniors who would want to room with freshmen so they don't have to graduate at the right time.

These types of reasons are why, whenever two or more students decide to spend the night together, the school makes sure to send every monster and creep their way. And the way that deters students, of course, is that they don't survive. You can try it, once, and then you will get overwhelmed and eaten alive or worse, mal after mal led directly to your door, wards weakened on purpose by the school itself. The tales of past students who tried it are usually enough to scare most people off the idea, but every year some stupid soul decides to try it anyway, and the screams echoing down the hall in the night tend to do the rest of the job of scaring every other student straight.

Well, unless Scorpius Lake is one of the students in question, of course. Then he is going to tell you to sit tight and shut up and stay awake all night fighting mals for you and he'll even survive, the bastard, and so will you.

Eventually Edmund's door is blasted off its hinges, but Scorpius seems to have almost presciently expected it, at least given the way he erects another, more solid shield half a second before it happens. The door splits in two on hitting the shield, and as the spell winks out Edmund gets a nice view of a kvenlik, its numerous clawed arms ready to tear its victims apart. But of course what happens instead is that Scorpius steps out of the dome shield, unsheathes a short metal rod that had been hiding under his shirt, and when he shakes it it extends out a blade of pure energy, which he then proceeds to use to dismember the mal. And for a mercy, this gives them a minute or two of reprieve as the other, less dangerous mals drop onto the kvenlik's corpse (all dismembered pieces of it) to eat it right there or drag it away.

Exciting!

"I should really be internalizing some of this for Maleficaria Studies. Kvenlik: handle with lightsaber."

Scorpius coughs out a snort and says, "I wouldn't, if I were you. I'm sure there is a proper way to kill those that isn't just dismemberment, but dismemberment works well enough. It's not mobile without its arms, even if it had still been alive after I got all of them the other mals would have just eaten it." He gives the rest of the room another look to make sure they do have that minute or two before turning to face Edmund more fully. "You alright? Anything get past yet?"

"No, I would've screamed like a little girl about it. Um. Is there an opportunity for me to use the Void, it seems like we're temporarily less under siege."

"Be quick about it," says Scorpius, chanting a short thing that makes another little shield bubble in a corner against one of the room's walls.

Or rather, lack-of-wall; the Scholomance is suspended in the Void, and while what exactly that entails in theory is the subject of heated scholarly debate, in practice it means that, other than the single door at the graduation hall that has a physical reality somewhere on Earth, everything else in the school lies in a state of semi-existence, disconnected from reality as understood by mundanes. This allows for a number of interesting properties, such as the school not really needing to be architecturally stable or have a fully consistent and constant map, but it also means that every student's dorm room has one wall (or in some cases the ceiling) entirely absent. Instead, there is the Void, which can be used as a toilet, for instance.

Edmund is quick about it, and returns to the main shield bubble still zipping back up. "Thanks. I could probably have shielded myself but - I'm not going to complain about you putting yourself out for me."

"I'm swimming in mana, New York can handle it if I wait until morning to deposit whatever I got left over from tonight."

"...I get the feeling we might be outliers on how much most people like their enclaves."

He laughs and sends a curving lightning bolt from a hand at a mal that tried to sneak behind Edmund and quietly dig through the shield while blocked from Scorpius's field of vision. Seems like their reprieve is over.

"I like them fine, but having me here got them lazy, I can make ten times as much mana as the whole rest of my cohort put together on my own so they've stopped bothering."

"...are they under the impression that they can't survive without you so there's no point in trying if you happen to get maw-mouthed or are they just too stupid for it to occur to them they should keep themselves sharp anyway - maybe that's not quite fair -"

"You are also an enclaver, what do you think?"

Now that the door has been blasted off and there is no longer a kvenlik blocking the way, a more steady stream of small and medium-sized mals starts pouring through, which is great for Scorpius since he can just AoE all of them.

"Nigel's our powerhouse, he does lightning. If Nigel got eaten by an argonet we'd look for someone bright with a gift for putting out punishment - ideally valedictorian material but realistically we'd take top fifteen - and we'd be able to seduce them because even without Nigel, we're a solid team. If New York lost you - well, first of all everyone would think they were fucking insane for letting you die, but there's those who'd look past it thinking they could protect themselves - but there's no one who'd do that and carry an entire team of people who delegate their homework and their mana production."

"They did not mean to," Scorpius says, "not at first. Everyone gets told how to generate mana, what to do, what reasonable amounts to give and take are. But then they pull a bit from the sharer and they notice it has more than they expected. And maybe they take a day off and nothing changes. And no one notices." Blast blast oh that one is irritating he's gonna have to lightsaber—no, it's a light whip now—dismember it, probably. "After a year of this," he continues after he's back, "they are all so used to it they don't even notice. Maybe some of them don't even know that everyone else isn't contributing, they still see the amounts of mana in our reservoir grow.

"Then sophomore year they tell our new freshmen about it, and now it's common knowledge. And they still have a lot of mana. And they make faces at me sometimes, when they think I'm not looking, when I give out mana to outsiders a bit too freely, but of course they know they have nothing to complain about."

"They didn't mean to." Edmund shakes his head in disgust. "If they hadn't told the freshmen about it, I'd accept that. But the freshmen will have to live without you. They could've told the freshmen, Scorpius Lake is an impossible, unthinkable blessing and if you take advantage of his impossible, unthinkable generosity instead of developing your own abilities then you will deserve exactly what happens to you."

He shrugs. "Unless something catastrophic happens, they will still have enough of my mana in their reservoir leftover to tide them over the transition of... me leaving."

Edmund struggles with the words. "Nothing is ever enough. There will never be enough of a surplus that some idiot who never even met you can't decide - we've still got the Lake surplus, I can lean a little harder. We've still got the Lake surplus, I don't have to work for it. We've still got the Lake surplus, I'm invincible. They'll take just a bit more, just a bit more, until they realize they don't have the Lake surplus anymore, and they won't know what to do without it."

"...if their parents outside don't teach them to generate mana for the pool that is almost, in itself, murder."

He carefully does not look at Edmund as he says that, though, and what he doesn't say is how much he agrees.

"Oh, they can generate mana. But they'll be used to drawing for every little thing. Work is a habit, and a damned easy one to break."

"Mmm."

Tasty mals! So he doesn't have to actually voice his thoughts.

"...I'm not going to talk to you about - duty. I know it's not really done, between enclaves. But. If it was me. I'd feel like I had to - be harder. Take a firm hand, before it was too late."

"I cannot be—their leader. I have told them all of this. They will do with it what they will but—" Oh good an opportunity to cut himself off by going after a mal, awesome, he does not want to finish that sentence right now.

"...you can't be their leader? Why not?"

He's not going to snap at this boy even though he feels like it, and instead he will kill a mal or two with a bit more prejudice than usual before saying, "I just don't have the skill. I kill things, that is what I'm good at."

And that's a lie, and he usually doesn't feel bad about lying, he lies all the time, but why is this boy opening up so much to him, and why is it so hard this time to quash the desire to open right back up? Honestly, what is it with these Pevensies? Someone should take them to a lab to study them.

"You are very good at it," Edmund admits.

Does this have anything to do with your mother is not a question he is going to ask Scorpius Lake, because then Scorpius Lake would be entirely justified in setting him on fire.

"...I don't want to make it sound like you're... doing something wrong," he says instead. "I don't think anyone can blame you for - for not spanking your clavemates when they get out of line."

Scorpius laughs, again, a bit more relaxed again. "I don't make a habit of spanking people without their consent anyway." Innuendo is easier, he can do innuendo, Edmund is even cute.

Edmund blushes a bit. "Well. That's something to keep in mind."

"Is it?" he asks lightly in between one spell in Old English and one in German. "I'll keep it in mind that you're keeping it in mind, then."

"Surely you're aware that you're attractive."

"It would be unseemly for me to say 'yes' to that."

But then he frowns, looks up and around, says something in Latin, and suddenly Edmund's vision is swimming and his ears are ringing and—oh there's a psychon right there isn't there, funny how he didn't see it before. Scorpius casts a couple more spells in quick succession and they have no visible effect other than making the psychon flinch and then scream (and become a bit more real in the process) and then he can pummel it with his lightwhip.

Which buys them another one or two minutes of reprieve as other mals go for the psychic-aspected corpse rather than them for a bit.

"Sorry about that, you can carry on flirting with me now."

"Aaaagh." Edmund sticks his tongue out and shakes his head vigorously. "You are like the stars in the sky, ow my head."

"Psychic class mals are the actual worst," he agrees. "I suck at healing spells or I would offer you something for the headache. Want some mana instead?"

"Uh. Don't think that'd necessarily help my head."

"No but if you have some better healing than I can offer you could use it for that."

Here's a light tap of mana, which coming from Scorpius Lake is "probably about half what Edmund can carry at all".

Edmund twitches. He incants something in Latin, then sighs with relief. "That's not usually worth the mana, but - that's kind of an incoherent complaint when you're around, huh."

"It is! And people get suspicious when I offer stuff for free but something tells me you won't think I poisoned it with malia or am secretly trying to kill you or something."

"It would seem inefficient," Edmund admits. "Also my brother has told me stories of the faces you made when he tried to pay you back, so I'm ready to interpret it as a personal quirk."

"Yes, caring about other people as themselves without having ulterior motives or expecting payback. I am a very quirky character."

He extends one hand outside their shield and places it on the floor, palm down, then electrifies it and this causes one of Edmund's chairs (one that definitely had not been there earlier this night) to shrivel up with a shriek. He then grabs said chair, mutters something in French, and now his hands are magma-hot, and now so is the ex-chair, and now it's dead.

Edmund raises his eyebrows. "You can care about people without looking at a poison detection charm like a dead rat because someone wants to thank you with it."

He really should've noticed that mimic. Good thing Lake is a killing machine.

"I did not," he protests between spells, "and anyway it is terrible for my image if people start thinking I'm doing this for some sort of, of reward or something."

Yes. His image. That is absolutely the reason he objected to Peter's thank-you-for-saving-my-life gifts. Mmhm.

"Your image. You know what would help your image? Nothing, people think you're the fucking Second Coming of Christ. A bodhisattva of violence."

"Yes but they'll start doubting I can walk on water if they get the idea that I'm not doing this for free after all, and where would we be then?"

"A little better off, I think. Your halo makes it a little hard to see your face."

"Maybe I'm so pretty it's better if people don't see my face."

"Once again: noted."

"What is it with you Pevensies, it's like you've made it your personal project to get a degree in how to get under Scorpius Lake's skin."

It's not entirely clear whether he thinks that's a good or bad thing. Not even to himself.

"It's a popular track, but there can only be one valedictorian."

"One per year," he corrects after a small pause to set a wall of living flame by the door, "and you all seem evenly spaced for that, don't you!"

"That's right, you wouldn't know about Lu. She'll be in next year, but I doubt she'll major in Lake Studies. After me it's all downhill."

"At last, some peace. I'm really not that interesting, you know."

"You don't hide something no one would want."

"And what's that supposed to mean?" he protests, perhaps a bit too much, but it's surely better than if he'd said "I'm not hiding anything!" since there is not a single person in this school who could have said that sentence truthfully.

Edmund does not give this the dignity of a response.

So Scorpius Lake sticks his tongue out at him and resumes his bloodbath—the school really really does not want kids together past curfew, he knew about it already but seeing firsthand just how many mals it manages to dig up just to harass them for it is kind of incredible.

The silence (broken up by the blasting of spells and the shrieking of mals) feels almost companionable. They might be able to stay like this for a while.

Curfew ends at 6AM sharp and Scorpius suspects that is exactly how long this parade is going to go on for.

"You should catch some sleep, no reason for both of us to stay awake all night," he says during another short lull in the onslaught, after having spent a while recasting the dome shield which had been about to wink out.

"For the record, you're suggesting that I put up a silencing circle around my bed and ignore you slaughtering maleficaria by the dozens not five feet away?"

"Yep."

"Just making sure."

Edmund climbs into bed, fully dressed (when he was a freshman he slept naked, but it took exactly one instance of waking up to the feeling of a scorpion-shaped mal crawling along his bare thigh to cure him of that habit), and mutters a quick bit of Latin. He closes his eyes and mutters some more, and soon enough he's asleep.

In his sleep, he smiles.

When it's about time for the seniors to get up, Scorpius pokes Edmund awake. His room is... still clearly a battlefield, but at least most of the actual physical remains of the maleficaria are gone, destroyed by spells or just eaten by other, more opportunistic mals. His door is in two pieces, though, and the place smells of all sorts of different things. It's almost the smell-equivalent of white noise, almost ignorable in its pungent multitude, but not quite.

Scorpius himself is no longer glowing, but he's covered in grime and his skin has the sheen of sweat of a whole night of strenuous exercise and his clothes are stained by all sorts of things. He doesn't seem put out by it, though, even sporting a light smile on his lips. Probably used to the carnage.

Edmund awakens feeling unaccountably good. Bright. He feels - hopeful. His eyes open and he sees Scorpius, and he remembers why.

"I should really save you sometime," he says. "Fair's fair."

He rolls his eyes and says, "Save me from this smell, then, I want a quick shower before breakfast and even though I could go alone there's no reason for me to do that."

"Yes, quite right. I could probably use one too."

He hops out of bed, grabs a potion bottle out of his bedside table, and - beholds his broken door.

"There is going to be absolutely no way to hide that something incredibly fucked-up just happened," he observes.

"People are going to unreasonably assume we somehow fucked, because why else would two people stay together overnight otherwise, no matter how terrible an idea that would be."

"Lake, I don't mean to be rude, but if I were going to fuck you it would be during the day. I cannot imagine being horny enough to justify last night."

"That's my point, but now I wish you to look me in the eye and tell me you don't think people are going to assume it anyway."

"I said nothing of the sort. I've learned never to overestimate gossips."

Edmund starts down the hall, potion bottle and water jug in hand. "I suppose we could have gotten the activity out of the way before curfew and just got caught out in the afterglow. Which is also insulting, but at least doesn't imply unlikely things about your ability to maintain an erection in the presence of burning mal corpses."

Scorpius purses his lips and very communicatively does not say anything.

"Good lord, really? I'll take it as a compliment."

"You're pretty and fighting things gets the blood flowing, sue me."

"I've never personally gotten my rocks off fighting for my life, but I am very pretty, so I'll accept the thesis."

His room is close enough to the bathrooms to be convenient without being close enough to the stairs to be inconvenient. They fetch up there before too long, and few enough others are awake that it's empty. "Take turns with one on watch, or does Scorpius Lake not care for such petty dangers?"

"Scorpius Lake does indeed not, as Scorpius Lake has never been jumped by a mal however much he wanted to be. I would have a very boring time here if I didn't go chasing stuff, it's very disappointing."

"Never? Not even - groglers, lyeflies, the idiot monsters that just move and eat and spawn? Even amphisbaena know you by reputation?"

"Reputation, or they can smell it, or something. Last night was the first time I've ever had them come to me rather than me chase them." He turns a faucet's handle to demonstrate and only water comes out and absolutely nothing starts making a ruckus in the pipes even as he takes his time washing his face.

In lieu of saying anything to that, Edmund turns on the neighboring faucet, half-fills his jug, then adds a drop of the potion. The water turns to a silky liquid soap. He moves as if to take off his shirt, then looks at Scorpius hesitantly. "Mind if I wash my clothes? I'll help with yours too if you want, the potion's brilliant."

"—sure, that'd be grand."

Easier than going back to his room for a new set anyway, so he starts stripping.

Edmund does the same, as unselfconscious as any Scholomance student. "Ella made the soap potion," he comments as he scrubs the cloth in the sink. "The product'll take stains out of or off of just about anything and the reactant can convert up to a pint per drop. Ella's a genius, just wish she were also a human person with feelings regarding anyone other than Adrian."

"I feel like I should not be getting this info for free," he says even though he is dying for any form of non-transactional human connection.

"If you get to give people things I get to give you things," Edmund says absently. "Besides, free's what you make of it, what if you take this free information back to Chloe and she orders a hogshead of the stuff from Ella? Everybody benefits."

"Meant more the part about Adrian."

"Oh. That's because I like you and you aren't actually going to tell anyone and I don't care very much if you do."

"You'd said five words to me before last night!" There's a giggle and Scorpius whirls in its direction and sees a couple of kids quickly walking away from the bathrooms, letting the door shut behind them. "...well."

Edmund shrugs. "We are standing naked in the loo together. After you spent the night in my room fighting off maleficaria. The assumption is not, at this point, unreasonable."

He laughs, shaking his head, and makes his way to the showers to have said actual shower before the junior queue's up at the cafeteria. "Not yet true, unfortunately," he calls from the stall.

Edmund finishes washing their clothes, dries them off magically, and hangs them on the hook between Scorpius' stall and the one he's going to be using. He showers efficiently, using up the rest of his soap, then rinses out the jug and fills it with water and filters out the tiny transparent barely-perceptible mals. 

He walks out of the shower and dries himself off and has the thought if I walk to breakfast with Scorpius instead of my enclave, there is not a person in the school who will not believe we are fucking.

The thought of talking to his clavemates right now makes him want to bite himself. And - it's a lost cause anyway, isn't it. Scorpius said so himself. 

"Lake," he says, shrugging his shirt on, "you still there? Want an escort to the cafeteria?"

He's already put most of his clothes back on. "Sure," he says, and Edmund can hear the amusement in his voice.

"It's a valuable service, you know. No one should have to walk the halls alone."

"We are in agreement, then. So hurry up, I'm a junior not a sophomore, I don't get as much time as you to waste around having a grand old time in the shower."

"I didn't have any kind of grand old time! I had to wash your clothes and mine beforehand, that takes time even with magic soap."

He dresses as he talks, though, and he's decent soon enough.

So out they can go, then, to the cafeteria, to feed the rumor mill more gossip than it can handle.

Someone near Lex is saying something about Scorpius Lake. Lex doesn't care about Scorpius Lake. He is determined not to care about Scorpius Lake. The extent to which he wants to know anything about Scorpius bloody Lake, especially his storied sex life, is sub-nil.

"-all night with Pevensie, and invited him to breakfast with New York."

"Peter? He's a senior, though!"

"Edmund. - younger. Sophomore."

"He goes for that?"

"He goes for anything. But he hasn't spent the night with someone before - or at least I don't think so, who can keep track of everything he gets up to - I heard he and -"

Lex slams his thermos on the table. It's metal, and the table is metal, and he's strong, and the resulting sound is substantial. "Will you people shut up about Lake's antics before I puke," he says, quietly, without turning around. "Please."

There's a lengthy pause, and the gossip turns to whispers. That'll have to do.

Lex returns to his absolutely tragic lunch, his mood almost as thoroughly soured as his stomach. Someday he thinks he'll kill Scorpius Lake. (Someday maybe he'll kill everyone in the world.)

He gives it up as a bad job. "Rest is free," he says aloud, and stands, taking his thermos and his bag and heading for his room. To study. Without thinking at all about stupid gossip.

No one is going to take his lunch. They'll probably think it's poisoned. He's the kind of person who'd poison someone for no reason, apparently.

Or maybe he hid a mal in it or something. They actually inch away from his lunch when he leaves, as if they hadn't already been giving him a wide berth.

Yi Liu, with her nearly-floor-length straight black hair and her jet black fingernails and her eyes that sometimes look like they were fully white before you convince yourself it was just a trick of the light, was one of the people sitting nearby, and not participating in the conversation, just existing around other people for safety. She throws him an anxious look—walking places alone is not safe here, he's going to—she doesn't need to care, she's sure he'd yell at her if she cared, so she doesn't, and instead returns to picking at her food with almost no enthusiasm.

(And someone else is watching him walk away like that, too. Metal on metal is loud, and Scorpius Lake is always watching his surroundings with more attention than most New York enclavers, so this is not surprising.)

Lex is not devoured on his way back to his room. This may be a minor miracle, but it's the kind that he makes for himself; his eyes are sharp, watching the corners and the ceiling and the floor ahead of him. He may be in a foul mood, but he's not an idiot. He's survived this long, at least.

Constant vigilance has a meditative effect. By the time he's back at his room, he feels much more human. He sits down at his desk, and takes out a block of wood and a small knife, and starts whittling. He is unutterably shit at whittling.

He's got a mana crystal by his left hand. He's got a thermos of lukewarm tea by his right hand.

He's got a soul eater seeping through his door, barely visible but for a faint purple haze.

And now what he also has is a quickly melting doorknob, then a hole on his door where it used to be, and then he has the school hero blasting through said door, hands ablaze, grabbing the ooze with his hands and causing it to screech and melt into an increasingly dead puddle.

When the soul-eater has been entirely killed he stops to catch his breath, leaning down on his own thighs as his hands return to a less glowing-hot state. By the way he has a thin sheen of sweat on his forehead, he'd probably been running this way.

Lex reacts appropriately. Which is to say he swivels around in his chair, beholds this, and pinches the bridge of his nose like he is feeling extremely put-upon.

"What the fuck," he asks, "are you doing."

Scorpius points at the puddle of dead ooze spreading itself all over Lex's room's floor, but given the way the putrescent smell hits Lex's nose right then that would not have been necessary, probably.

"Yes, I see that you have melted a perfectly good soul-eater. Maybe I was imprecise. Why did you feel the need to sail into my room and save my dark and curséd life? Why were you even here, there's ten minutes left of lunch."

Scorpius looks up at Lex, eyebrows raising slowly, but out of all the things he could have picked to say to that he goes for, "'Curséd'?"

"Oh, fuck you too. I was channeling public opinion."

"Do you do that a lot?" he asks, sounding genuinely curious. He straightens up and gives the putrefying ooze a look, wrinkling his nose.

"No. The public can lick my arse. Do you care to explain why you decided to follow me home like a lost puppy?"

"Had a hunch," he says, shrugging. "They're usually right. My hunches."

"Sadly, your hunch was wrong. Not only did you melt my doorknob, probably splinter half the frame, and fill my room with noxious slime, you did it for no damned reason."

Lex cracks open a nearby spellbook to a silken bookmark. "For the Unraveling of Souls. Incantation - let's skip that bit. Gesture: crook and twirl finger forty-five degrees. For ideal results - I'm not doing that. Mana cost, irrelevant. Effects on humans, obvious and devastating. Effect on a soul-eater: peels the bloody thing like an onion, leaving behind a wisp core."

He closes the book, stroking its spine gently for a moment before replacing it with its fellows. Turns back to Scorpius. Raises an eyebrow. "Do you know what Sophie Hara could do with a wisp core?" Before Scorpius can answer, he answers himself: "Neither do I. Nor will I. Ta."

"—why the hell do you have that spell?"

"Picked it up at fucking Waterstones, what do you think? The school gave it to me!"

"No fucking shit it did, what were you pulling for to get that?"

"My blanket was coming apart and I wanted to get as much out of it as I could for the next. My wording was... imprecise."

(His blanket, Scorpius may notice, is clearly hand-knit; he's not very good at it, but there are no significant gaps. It's just uneven and raggedy.)

Scorpius does, in fact, glance at Lex's blanket, then at Lex's face, then at the other books he has there, then at Lex's face again.

He starts to work out the implications of this in his head.

And what he asks is, "What happened to Jack Westing?"

Lex - laughs. If you can call it that. It's not a happy sound.

"Not going to ask what happened to Luisa?"

"Westing happened to Luisa."

"I happened to Westing."

He's not proud. He's not sorry, either. He just - isn't.

"Good job." It's genuine. "Why didn't you tell anyone?"

"People liked Westing. People don't like me. I don't think it's tribunal material, but I wouldn't get a medal."

This is not the reason. This is absolutely not the reason. This could not be farther from the reason.

Scorpius feels... like he maybe knows what the reason is.

"...well. Sorry about your door. Do you, ah, want help fixing it?" Then he is reminded of the smell as a particularly large bubble on the oozing fluid bursts and wafts its aroma in their direction and adds, "And maybe cleaning this? I suck at cleaning spells but I can spot you the mana." He eyes the books then amends that with, "If you've got any good spells for that, yourself."

Lex sighs. "Oh, guess."

He heads over to the void wall. Inhales deeply - coughs violently. Inhales deeply through his mouth. "I would like a spell to clean the remains of a soul-eater off my floor. Please."

The book that is spat out onto his bed is leather-bound, and the ink is red. It opens to a page.

"Organic matter disintegration," he diagnoses. "Expensive, but thorough."

He offers Lex a hand, looking up expectantly at him.

Lex looks startled. "- I was joking. Or - no. I wasn't joking. It's expensive. I was going to try again."

"I pull from the mals I kill. Not even malia, just straightforward mana."

"What the fuck."

Scorpius shrugs, and looks down at his hand then back at Lex again. "If you use this matter disintegration spell on an actual person I will be forced to hunt you down and disintegrate you but..." He glances at Lex's headboard, in perfect condition with zero holes from having pulled malia from it, which virtually everyone else does. Not someone who is strict-mana, though.

Lex caught that glance.

"Damn, you've caught me."

"Take my mana or pull for another spell, the offer's here either way."

Lex touches Scorpius' hand.

And here is an amount of mana that... for anyone with regular mana capacity would be Rather A Lot, but Scorpius does take note of how this is definitively not the case with this boy.

Curiouser and curiouser.

It's not enough to sting, but it's enough to widen his eyes. He shakes his head minutely.

"Alright. This is going to be in Coptic."

And, after a polite moment in case Scorpius wants to cover his ears, he begins to incant. The puddle of slime is consumed by smokeless fire within seconds.

Lex attempts to surreptitiously touch a perfectly transparent crystal on a pendant around his neck. It having been thus brought to his attention, Scorpius might recognize the make.

"...ah," is what he says, because he does recognize the make. "It all begins to make sense."

"Sorry?"

"The Radiant Mind crystal around your neck. Which you somehow have despite not being from any enclave or famous family or anything. Which is not unheard of, of course, Gwen Higgins gives those out whenever she thinks they are going to be put to good use. Doesn't she?"

"...she can do whatever she wants."

"Mmhm. Well, I believe I have intruded enough, so I should probably get going..."

"Yeah. Thanks for the mana. And for breaking my door. You realize I'll have to go to workshop to get enough raw material to make-and-mend the handle? If you really wanted to help out you could walk me down and kill the argonet that's presumably waiting for me to poke my head in. Unless that's too much for the conquering hero."

Scorpius covers his lips with a hand to hide his grin. "I suppose I could come with you after dinner. I am told if you try to take anything from the workshop before then it'll try to eat you."

"Shockingly, I knew that, not having gotten myself killed in the past three years. I suppose you wouldn't have cause to know if it's common knowledge, since if the workshop tried eating you it'd give itself indigestion."

"It's more a case of never having had need for it. And if I try to get it from the New York stash Magnus might try to eat my head and it would be terrible for my image if I had to stop him."

"Ah, yes, the stash. ...I've never heard of it before but in retrospect it's the least surprising thing I've learned since 'Americans invented sliced bread'."

"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."

"It'd ruin my figure."

"You know what will also ruin your figure?" He extends a hand and—no, he's holding out an apple, he'd been holding it since they left the cafeteria. "Skipping two meals in a row."

Lex stares at it.

"I'm not fucking you for a Red Delicious," he says acidly. "And if you're going to do me a favor, it should be looking where you're walking."

"I have never been jumped by a mal on my own in my life," he says, the apple still in offer, although he is actually looking where he's walking, if still too casually for comfort, "and when I'm with other people they tend to go out of their way to avoid me. We'll be fine. And I'm not trying to bribe you or—look, Lex, I meant every word I said, okay? So just take the damn apple to have literally any sugar in your blood, and if you want me to give you a selfish reason to do it, it will be better for both of us walking down these stairs if I don't have to worry about you fainting from lack of calories."

Lex takes the damn apple. He eats the entire thing, core included, over the course of a blessedly silent minute.

He—smiles, a bit, to himself, and does not fill the minute with any sounds other than their steps.

At the end of the minute, though, he says a short sentence in French and his left hand starts glowing to make up for the increasingly dark hallways with their increasingly dim oil lamps. It's enough to cover them all the way to the workshop, whose door is standing slightly ajar. Just enough to show its oppressive darkness which is surely holding something that wants to jump them and eat them and—

—and Scorpius pushes the door open without even checking for a digester or anything worse and walks in.

...Lex follows him in. Maybe the inevitable lurking horror will be another soul-eater.

No inevitable lurking horrors spring at them. Scorpius tries turning the lights up, with no luck, then shrugs and sighs, making his way around the far-too-cramped space with far too many chairs to go to one of the supply chests. "Anything in particular you want?"

"...scrap. If your aura of inevitable success makes there be titanium rods and diamond dust instead, I'll take it and trade some to Sophie for her scrap."

He makes a beeline for the scrap bins and opens one of them—with his actual hands, no matter that they're bare other than the glow that wasn't even hot enough to feel warm around—and grabs a few big flat pieces. After shaking them rather violently and beating them against the side of the nearest table with the put-upon airs of someone who's only doing this for someone else's peace of mind he asks, "Anything else? No titanium rods and diamond dust in the bin that I could see."

"...pliers. Are you also going to open the tool chest with your bare hands."

"Yup!" he says brightly, doing exactly that to show off several neat rows of hammers, screwdrivers, spanners, hacksaws, many pliers for Lex to choose from and... an honest-to-God drill, the kind of thing the school just basically never offers like that. Certainly no one in their junior hall has one.

And not a single one of the tools jumps at Scorpius or tries to bite his fingers off of hurt him in any way.

"Holy shit. ...I'm going to assume this happens to you alternate Tuesdays, but we're taking that fucking drill home with me. And a pair of pliers, and, I don't know, hacksaw's nothing and hammers I've got main force but let's pick up a screwdriver for funsies."

He takes the sheet metal so Scorpius can pick out the tools. "I assume you know how to check for bad tools," he mentions, "if that's another thing that doesn't happen to you I can pick them out."

In lieu of replying, or even grabbing the things Lex asked for, he instead gets a hammer—a large, hefty one—and in one smooth motion steps over to Lex and smashes it down over his shoulder, slamming the forehead of something one of the dull metal chairs behind him had turned into. A mimic, its mouth full of jagged silver teeth opening along the seam where the seat met the back.

"Fuck! You're rubbing off on -"

He looks over his shoulder.

"- oh. Oh that's not good."

Four other chairs seem to be collecting their own legs in to charge at them, so "not good" is something of an understatement. Scorpius starts chanting a metal-forging spell, and the nearest mimic, the one that was just currently recovering from the hammer blow Scorpius dealt it, starts glowing red-hot. He hits it with the hammer again, which at this stage of melting gives it a neat hole and makes it shriek as it falls over dead.

The others, though, seem intent on going for Lex, so Scorpius drops down to his knees and yells, "Jump!"—

- and Lex has dropped the sheet metal and he's muttering and waving one hand with the other clutching his crystal and there's a rending-tearing-screeching metal sound and the mals scream in agony as they crumple and implode.

Lex falls to one knee. "Mana," he grits out. "Please."

—okay seems like Lex has this well in hand then, no need for him to electrocute them all.

He doesn't want to do it without touching, he's not great at mana control and if he tries to cross the air between them he will absolutely send too much, so instead he quickly scurries over to Lex to put a hand on his shoulder and yep there we go that's mana.

That sure fucking is mana. Lex stands up and brushes himself off. He pats his crystal gently, pushing in a little more than he drew out with a whispered apology. Walks over and picks up the smooth, shiny orb of compressed aluminum.

"If I wanted a doorknob made out of mal," he muses, "this would be great."

That was really hot, Scorpius absolutely does not say, except maybe with his eyes for a second or two.

"So," he says instead, not quite reaching conversational as he turns back around to go back to the tool chest, "that one is usually meant to be used on people, isn't it?" Pliers, drill, screwdrivers, he can check them for maleficaria but they all seem kosher.

"How'd you guess. For extra fun, if the target's made of flesh, it leaves it alive." He picks up the sheet metal and puts the aluminum in his pocket - he's sure somebody'll pay for, heh, maluminum. "Well. 'Alive.'"

He pauses and looks at the crumpled mal then back at Lex and says, "H-how d—no, actually, you know what, I do not need to know what you mean by alive there, this is something I will never have reason to need to know I am sure." He bumps the tool chest shut with an elbow and walks back over to Lex.

"The heart beats," Lex says unnecessarily. "On top, like a rosette on a Christmas gift."

He makes for the exit. Thanks God he has a good belt, he can feel the metal sphere in his pocket trying to pull his trousers down.

And Scorpius carries everything else and follows along, focusing very strongly on how much Lex does not want to fuck him, thank you very much.

"I'm curious about something," Lex says abruptly to disrupt the companionable silence. "You're not in charge of New York."

"—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.

Edmund opens his door, yawning a bit, and - stares at Scorpius for a long moment.

His mouth opens a couple of times, but he doesn't quite say anything.

"Hi! Wanna go on a breakfast date with me? Fine if not but fair warning I'm going to eat all of this by myself if you don't, I'm still a teenage boy in need of calories."

Edmund squints a little harder, then smiles, still nonzero confused but able at least to start flirting. "Um. I don't know, date to where? I'm not easily impressed, you know, and you took your other boyfriend on a supply run."

—Scorpius has to watch his trays to not drop them while he cackles. "I think you got it wrong, he was the one who dragged me on a supply run. Also if you call him my boyfriend in his presence he might come personally kill me for giving people ideas even though it is entirely his fault. As for your question, library reading room is fairly cozy at this time in the morning."

"I'll take it, give me a second to freshen up. Do you... need help... with the maleficer who you are apparently not dating and in fact might kill you."

Edmund heads back into his room and gets another potion off his bedside table (it's chock-a-block with bottles), and droppers a tiny amount on his tongue. Then he goes back out, ready for... a library date?

"He's not a maleficer," Scorpius says with a small shrug, "and that was a joke. If it looks like he killed me I give you 80/20 odds that it was actually someone else trying to get rid of me and incriminate him in one fell swoop."

Librarywards! Which is all the way to the top floor so he's gonna have to be careful with the trays.

Edmund takes his own tray, entertaining though it might be to watch Lake learn to juggle.

"...if he's not a maleficer why's he... like that? Always glaring at people, not even eating half the time - I know lack of appetite's a symptom of maleficing - and I've seen him do magic that made my skin crawl... never at people, but - who pulls a spell that flays something, even if they're only going to use it on a suckerworm?"

"...I am not sure I should say, he seems to prefer not to be looked at. I guess what I can say is that he is strict mana and has as far as I can tell always been."

Edmund looks so dubious.

"...I can't... dispute that... because I have never actually seen him draw mana. But - I don't know. Maybe I'm paranoid."

"Everyone is, around him. It's tragic, I'm pretty sure he has not had a real conversation with anyone ever in his life because of how everyone wants to stay away from his aura of doom." Headshake. "Let's not talk about other boys right now, how about. How are you doing?"

"Um. Surprisingly well considering, like, where we are. I slept better last night than the night previous for obvious reasons and that always wipes me out a bit. Peter gave me a celebratory cupcake yesterday and I very nearly hit him over it. ...I should call a family meeting sometime before graduation, I've been trying to avoid the thought but... it's coming, isn't it."

"Family meeting, is that a thing?" he wonders. "What was Peter celebrating?"

"The supposed loss of my bloody virginity, thanks ever so by the way."

Scorpius has to once again watch his balance lest he drop his tray due to the cackling. Here's the library, fewer stairs now. "I think you should only thank me once it's actually true. Wouldn't want to jinx it."

"But on that occasion I will not receive an incredibly embarrassing cupcake. Unless it's from Susan, who probably would work it out, damn her to hell."

He shudders a bit as he finds an empty sofa for them. The library isn't completely empty right now but it is in fact very nearly so. He places his own tray on the little centerpiece table in front of the sofa and leans back to grin at Edmund. "She absolutely would, I swear we have had a million conversations just by exchanging looks without either of us saying even a word."

"You never had to live with her. I stole an earring out of her jewelry box when I was six and she was seven and on a trip outside the enclave, and inside half an hour of getting back she'd identified the culprit and practically called a tribunal over it."

Edmund starts in on breakfast. "I cannot believe you found fried mushrooms," he says. "Apparently even this blessed place can't fuck up an English breakfast."

"I did have to convince a senior or two to grab me the stuff," he admits. "But I got some goodwill stored up." Scorpius, too, starts on breakfast, as even though this is a "date" they still do in fact have their classes to get to in an hourish so they shouldn't waste more time than necessary.

"I hope one of them wasn't my brother. He's confused enough without you suddenly accepting people's goodwill."

"It's fine if it's, you know, a little bit of the collective amalgamate of goodwill from all persons," he says, long-sufferingly.

...he should not ask what he wants to ask. He shouldn't, right? He should not. Getting attached is a stupid idea and he has always managed to be fine and not ask anyone any personal questions and they don't ask him any personal questions and their attachment is ephemeral and goes away after a fling or two.

He is, perhaps, staring a bit at Edmund right now, looking at him like he's somewhere between delicious cake and a very tricky but interesting puzzle.

"I don't actually read minds, you know. Despite the occasional hint my wall has dropped me."

He chews on his bottom lip for a couple more seconds and says, "Just ruminating on life, is all. Wouldn't want to dump all of my trauma on you on our first date."

"Because I, of course, have been perfectly stoic and revealed none of my trauma to you on our actual first date."

"Stop being so charming," he snaps with no heat. "You're making it really hard to resist you."

"I do like being irresistible. Seriously, Lake, come on. I'll tell you my secrets too, if you'd like. Reception year in primary school we had to talk about our life ambitions, and I said I was going to marry my big brother because he was the best nicest boy in the world, and the teacher gave me a note to take home to my parents."

Scorpius sporfles and coughs, having to grab some orange juice to recover from that. "You know, when I flirted with your brother he said I was not his type, but he would not tell me what his type is."

"Not a clue, he's never had eyes for anyone that I heard about. Spoiled for choice, too, obviously, you've seen him."

"Looks are nice but they are not the reason I was ever interested in him or your sister or you." He shakes his head and leans back against the back of the sofa, again, letting his eyes flit shut for a moment or two. "Last chance for you to run away from the incoming session of oversharing."

"No, I told you about my disturbing infant crush on my older brother because I had no interest in your feelings."

"The only real friend I've ever had in my life got torn to pieces before my eyes because I consciously chose not to save him," he says, eyes still closed. The levity on his face is still there, but now it's—frozen, he's trying not to move and trying to pretend it doesn't still haunt his nightmares and failing.

Edmund shifts over on the couch and hugs him. Words are not going to be the thing here.

He twitches, under the hug—he almost thought they were under attack—and he's still not—sure what—to do?

This is somewhat new. Um.

He'll hug back.

Oh shit no he is not going to cry that is so lame come on pull yourself together Scorpius, sharing your feelings in a manly fashion is fine but hey is this kind of internalized racism, is he playing into racist stereotypes of Black hypermasculinity, he's not sure, maybe it's just regular masculinity and everything every fucking person who has ever met him expects of him and okay he got too distracted from trying not to cry so now he's crying.

"...I haven't had anyone die on me," Edmund says eventually. "Not - not really - because I never got that way with anyone. But. It was because I was scared. You know? I don't - I don't know if it's really that I couldn't find anyone who I could really be friends with, or if I was just afraid that if I did they'd - go - and so I wasn't looking."

"Sometimes I wonder if that's easier. ...most of the time. And it's what I went with, isn't it? It is easier when everyone... doesn't really see me like a person. I don't need to be a person for them." He shrugs a bit and, okay, his tears have stopped, not because he was trying to make them—okay maybe he was—ugh he is going to stop psychoanalyzing himself right now, it's all Edmund's fault. "Except your brother. And your sister. And you. And Lex fucking Higgins wait shit."

"...Lex H- setting that aside. I don't want you to - to feel like you have to open yourself up to me. But. It can't be good for you to have no one who you can open up to."

He laughs, bitterly, and pulls away from the hug. "Please don't tell other people about Lex's name, I don't think he'd appreciate it." He wipes some of the tears from his face with the back of his hand and leans forward to his breakfast tray to pick at the rest of his food that he really should finish eating before their hour is up. "And, well, you know, it's not like I did have anyone to open up to before here. Thibaut was the first, and then he died, so I think you can probably understand why I feel a bit wary about doing it again. I don't think I'm cursing you or anything if I become your friend, but if you're just some cute guy I hook up with a couple of times then if I fail to save you I only grieve you a reasonable amount rather than an unreasonable amount.

"So, you were wondering what was going through my mind that you wanted to read, earlier, this is what."

"...well, apologies for disrupting your tidy system. If it helps any, I had no intention of letting go of you after a few hook-ups. I'm on the Lake Studies track long-term."

Edmund returns to his own breakfast. "Fried bread tastes better after crying," he decides. "Have some, I'll steal that bit of melon."

Scorpius laughs again, more sincerely this time, and accepts the trade. "...what I meant to ask, earlier, was why. Why are you interested in me, like that?"

"When you'd just gotten me back into my room. You said - the part of you that your mother raised wanted to apologize for saving me, and the rest wanted to shake me until all the idiot came out. You didn't say anything about - my reasons. You didn't say, you have so much to live for. You didn't say, that's the selfish way, the coward's way. You respected my decision but wanted me to know it was a stupid one. And - that kind of started me thinking, what is it that's really going on in his head?"

"Yeah? Reached any insights on that one?"

Mentally, Edmund performs a warding-off-evil gesture.

"...it's not that you don't actually want to help people as much as they think you do, because you do. It's not that you aren't perfect, because - in the ways that matter, you are. But you wish you weren't."

"Fucking Pevensies, man," he half-laughs half-hiccups.

"Sorry, mate, doesn't really turn off." Further hugs?

Sure fine hugs. "Fine, guess we're friends now, you happy?"

Edmund thinks about it.

"For now? Yeah."

"Do we at least get to be the kind of friends that kiss sometimes or is that not allowed."

"Wouldn't say no."

Edmund turns his head for a kiss. The nice thing about food in the Scholomance - perhaps the only nice thing - is that there's practically no aftertaste to it, so Scorpius just tastes like... well, Scorpius.

...wait he wasn't actually expecting this, nice!

He leans down to press their lips together—they're already hugging, so he can just lift his hand up Edmund's back and run his fingers through Edmund's hair. It's... nice. He is feeling kind of a whole mess of emotions right now including very desperate for this bizarrely perceptive boy but Edmund had said—lost his virginity—Scorpius does not want to rush things with him. They can take their time.

Edmund makes an absolutely pathetic little noise when Scorpius touches his hair. His eyes flutter closed and -

he breaks off the kiss and opens his eyes again. "Um. We shouldn't be doing this here. It's very nice, but. Terrible idea. And we should be getting to class."

"—yes. Right. Class," Scorpius says, blinking in a daze a bit and seriously considering skipping, but—no, the Scholomance would be put out, and it's been so nice to them so far this morning, no mals at all on their little date.

Edmund consolidates their trays. (His plate mysteriously still has a little puddle of baked beans, but has otherwise been picked clean.) "I'll bus these. Go on. And - we can get back to it later."

"You're insane if you think I'm letting you walk to the cafeteria alone right now. Call me paranoid but I'm coming with. I have alchemy lab downstairs anyway."

"Well. I'm not turning you down."

(Mostly he just wanted to hear him say it.)

Scorpius notices that.

"Pevensie, you're such an ass," he says, hopping to his feet and offering Edmund a hand up.

"Granted."

He takes Scorpius' hand and hauls himself to his feet.

He doesn't seem inclined to let go.

Scorpius notices this also! "Guess the rumors are nearly true now, huh?" he says, squeezing.

Off they go, then.

"Well, not the cupcake-inducing ones, but we do seem to be on our merry way."

Lake isn't at breakfast today. Lex has a line all ready to go about the hypocrisy of criticizing other people's eating habits and then immediately skipping a meal, when - he comes in with bloody Pevensie.

Fortunately, Lex already ate as much as he could stomach today, and he only got as much as he could stomach in the first place, so at least he's not wasting food, the horror.

Oh there Lex is, and he looks like he's even eaten! Scorpius considers this a success, and a resounding one at that.

He gives Edmund a quick peck on the lips before making his way to Lex.

Oh absolutely fucking not.

Absolutely fucking yes. "Hey, Lex. Want company walking to the labs?" he says, probably not oblivious to the death glare. And of course now the whole school has even more fuel for its gossip mill.

Lex strongly considers making some kind of anatomically implausible threat. But, ultimately, they're in the cafeteria, and threatening Scorpius Lake in public is the kind of shit that gets Ibrahim or someone on a vigilante kick.

Also, he has absolutely no excuse to be this pissed off, and he's exactly self-aware to know that. He doesn't have some kind of claim on Lake. Even if he did, Pevensie was by all accounts there first. But more to the point, he doesn't, because he would set his own dick on fire before touching Lake's perfectly formed arse. And Lake clearly knows that. Because instead of playing some stupid will-they-won't-they game with Lex, who doesn't want him, he's back to fucking around with Pevensie.

"I would love nothing more," he says in a tone that most would use for the kind of anatomically implausible threat he was just considering.

Scorpius purses his lips to prevent himself from saying what he wants to say. He tries to think of something else, and eventually goes for, "I think that whatever is going through your head right now is probably not true. Not that I'm claiming to know, exactly, what it is. But I'm not gonna stop liking you just because I also like other people, you're gonna have to work for me to stop liking you."

"I've been working at nothing else for the past twenty-four hours."

But Lex drags himself to his feet.

"You're doing shit at it."