"That sounds workable," Lex comments. "Long as he's into you as well, and I'm sure the way gossip travels in this misbegotten place you'll find that out soon enough."

    "This is why I didn't want to—in public, I mean—"

"Geoff is openly bi, too," muses Scorpius. "But anyway, so you find out you're into both of them and, what, you wanted to ask me how to make it work or...?"

    "Well—yeah. I guess. Something like that."

"No clue! I just kinda bumbled at these two and they found it charming rather than exasperating."

"I found it bloody infuriating, thank you. You want to know how to make three people work? Talk to them. Both of them. Ideally before they have a chance to hear from the rumor mill, but if you have to start by getting laughed at then do that. But get them both in the same place, tell them how you feel about them, and if you're lucky they're into saps and if you're not then you're fucked but not more fucked than you would be if you'd tried something clever. There's no clever to be had here. Just fucking talk about your feelings like an adult."

Everyone stares at Lex for a second like he's grown a second head. It's still a scary head but it's being unreasonably reasonable and mature.

Except for Scorpius, who just looks kind of enamored. "Told y'all he's great," he says in a dreamy voice.

    "...well I mean it's pretty obv—" Jermaine starts, but Scorpius immediately interrupts him with, "Take the advice in the spirit it's given, man, don't try to act like you know better," to which Jermaine looks down at his lap in a furious not-blush and says, "Yeah. Um. Okay. You're right. Thank you." The last words are directed at Lex, and sound heartfelt.

"...welcome. I do great with advice that people hate getting, it's in-affinity."

Chloe giggles and Jermaine snorts but Scorpius just nods sagely. "It's true, can confirm."

"Lex, speaking of your affinity, I was thinking about that spell we were working on, and I think I might've had a breakthrough on cruor..."

Lex is thoroughly nerdsniped by this.

Breakfast proceeds apace, the ice thoroughly broken now. Three whole gossip anvils just dropped and the whole school is bound to know all about it before noon ("Excuse me, I have a boy and a girl to seduce," Jermaine says to excuse himself before the others, because Actually he does want to talk to them ahead of the rumor mills), but that's a hell of a way to make any other conversational topics sound way less awkward or heavy in comparison. By the end of breakfast the whole table is even just... chatting normally. As if it's just okay that Lex Doomsbringer and Edmund Silvertongue and Scorpius Malkiller are dating and there's nothing strange about this and Chloe (and by extension New York as a whole) is fine with it and everything will be... okay.

Maybe the spell will break at some point later but for now it's nice. The bell signalling the upcoming end of breakfast stirs everyone, and the invitation for them to join New York at the library for some fun Saturday morning class work is implicit in how they seem to be sort of getting up together and moving as a group, at least on their way out of the cafeteria.

"...yeah, sure," Lex mutters. "Pevensie, you coming or do you have to placate London that you're not being poached?"

"They're not idiots and we've already discussed my obligations to the enclave."

"How unnecessarily ominous. Makes me glad to be indie."

Chloe gives him a funny look but doesn't comment. Scorpius does, though: "I should sit with them at some point. See which feathers I've ruffled and all that. Maybe have one of those nice nonverbal chats with Susan."

"...I'm weirdly tempted to invite you to the family meeting? It'd let you see Peter for probably the last time any of us will before graduation eve. Susan would bully me for being a sap but what else is new."

"Hey, I'm in."

"Grand. Uh, Sunday after supper, come to my room and I'll bring you over."

Edmund worries his lip for a moment before electing to touch Scorpius' hand for a moment. (It would be very stupid to hold hands in the hallway. Hands are sometimes needed for killing mals. But touching is okay.)

Scorpius may be stupid. Or overconfident. Either way, he hooks his pinky finger around Edmund's.

Eeeee. Edmund feels emotions about this!

Lex will be keeping an eye out for mals. In an indulgent, eye-rolling sort of way.

Magnus and the rest of the New York contingent catch up with them, and his outrage is turning the air around him into a block of solid ice. Chloe pulls him aside to have a few choice words with him.

And with that they make their way up to the library, unmolested by any monsters.

Lex is being a good lad and will not say I can hold your hand too if you're jealous, Tebow, but he thinks it with such intensity that Magnus might be able to hear it anyway.

Library! A place where physical contact is not kind of objectively a terrible idea.

...New York's couch is not as cozy as London's, in Edmund's professional opinion. Scorpius, however, remains good and huggable.

And once again Scorpius finds himself having the thought that he doesn't want to find out if it's possible to fail out of the Scholomance so he will in fact do homework. Despite how much he wants to just snuggle instead.

Edmund has Old English homework to get done. He's not linguistics track but that doesn't mean he doesn't have to learn more languages than is in any way reasonable.

Lex will work on maths. Maths is incredibly dull but, like all homework, if you do not do it it will try to eat you.