When he gets back to his dorm, other students are beginning to stir; a few of them have even left their rooms. They assume he's one of these early risers.

Also, Edmund is standing in front of the door to his room, and as Scorpius approaches, he turns to stare at him.

"Oh hi," he says, looking... perhaps a bit like a dog that has just been caught trying to get onto the table to get the chocolate cake there even though he maybe knows dogs shouldn't be eating chocolate cake. Maybe if he'd been less surprised, and less "just spent the night up hunting mals" sleep-deprived, he'd have managed to smooth out the guilty look on his face. As-is, though, he looks rather caught.

"Good morning," Edmund says automatically. "How frequently exactly do you do this?"

"...uh, normally once every week or... two."

"Let's talk about this later," Edmund decides. "Did you want to shower, I've got the potion for it."

"Sure! I'll get a change of clothes first and let's grab Lex too?"

He does not liiiiike thiiiiis lalalalala~

"Yes, let's." Edmund steps out of the doorway.

So Scorpius goes into his room grab a change of clothes and his knapsack (which he did not have with him, he only needs his hands and his trusty lightsaber for mal killing) and then after locking and refreshing the wards on his door walks five doors down to knock on Lex's door.

Lex answers after some fairly determined pounding. "It's 6am on a Saturday," he growls. "What-"

"Well, you see, Lake was already up," Edmund says meaningfully. "- besides, you can't afford to skip breakfast, come on."

"The Hell do you mean he was already up? Was he, what, roving around all night killing -"

Lex sniffs the air.

"You're fucking joking."

"I do that sometimes!" he says, a tad defensively.

....a LOT defensively.

"We're going to shower and have breakfast and then yell at him about it," Edmund says firmly. "It'll go better if we're certain that we're not just hungry-angry."

"...long as I get to yell at him," Lex mutters. He grabs his change of clothes and steps out into the hall.

Scorpius considers trying to get a whole Contingent of kids to escort to the bathrooms but that'd just be delaying the inevitable.

Most juniors are going to sleep in, a bit, today; their breakfast queue won't open for a while still and they can freshen up after rather than before breakfast, what with how there's no class today. And this is truer of sophomores and freshmen, who have an even later breakfast queue (if only by fifteen minutes). Plus, most people don't actually go get cleaned that often anyway, so the bathrooms are not very full.

There are the seniors, though, who have graduation practice runs in the gym scheduled even on Saturdays and therefore need to get up early anyway, so the bathrooms are still not deserted.

Edmund mixes up a batch of soap and distributes it between the three of them. They can shower separately on this occasion.

Too damn right they can.

No distracting them with sex this morning? Shame.

Scorpius is used to quick and efficient showers, himself. Being one of the only people (perhaps the only person? he hasn't checked) at school who does shower daily due to mals being afraid of him rather than vice-versa, he still doesn't have much reason to dawdle. But after he's done showering he goes to one of the mirrors and grabs his trusty blade—athame, Lex had called it, and Scorpius is growing rather fond of the description—lathers his face and head with warm water and some of that soap potion, and gets to shaving everything. He doesn't bother getting dressed for this, it'd just get his clothes wet.

Lex exits his shower and beholds this.

"Very hygienic," he comments. "Thank God I'm blonde enough not to have to worry."

"I'm Black, I have to worry rather a lot," Scorpius says, smiling as he goes through the practiced motions fairly quickly. "Although probably less than I actually do. I just like the way I look."

He's done in short order, but he gets his blade properly rinsed and cleaned and dried and carefully resheathed before he even pats his face dry and puts his clothes back on.

Edmund exits the shower midway through, and once the process is complete, rubs Scorpius' head vigorously.

"Haircut tax," he says solemnly.

Scorpius giggles and leans over to give Edmund better access.

"Are we not being angry today? Is that postponed?"

"We're being angry later. Opportunities to invoke the haircut tax are rare in the Scholomance. Nigel thinks it's undignified, and Peter hasn't been cutting his hair because he's had no time with graduation prep."

"We should get going to the cafeteria, though, and you can find whatever inventive things you want to rub against me later."

"You just don't stop. Alright, let's get moving."

Edmund gets his clothes back on and follows dutifully. 

"I absolutely do stop! With other people."

They are, predictably, earlier than most non-seniors, although their jaunt to the bathrooms means that they're not actually that much earlier—there are still limited times the food queues are open for and no one, not even enclavers, is so well-fed in the Scholomance that they can afford to skip meals very regularly. Saturdays aren't regular, so there are people who choose to gamble on their door wards and catch up on sleep rather than catch up on food, but still.

Scorpius Lake and Edmund Pevensie can afford to take one of the nicer tables that aren't already claimed by enclaves specifically. Scorpius doesn't really feel like dealing with them right now, and even encourages some of the less popular kids to join up. And so he does groan internally when Chloe Rasmussen and Jermaine Thomas from New York decide to come sit with them. Thankfully he doesn't have to deal with Magnus Tebow this time, who doesn't quite stomp his way to the NY enclave table but does look like there is a little bit of steam coming out of his ears.

    "May I?" asks Chloe of two other juniors sitting across the table from Scorpius and his boyfriends, and they scoot enough along to give her and Jermaine some prime space right there.

"I'd think the divination on my head last night would have sufficed to reassure you," Scorpius says with a slight smirk.

    "It did!" she says, brightly with a hint of sheepish to her cheeks. Then she shuts her eyes for a second as if to steel herself and turns to look at Lex. "I came to... apologize. I seem to have misjudged you."

"...well. Um. I didn't... give you much reason to-"

"Sorry, excuse me," Edmund says a bit sharply. "Chloe, you're apologizing, that's lovely, I'm glad that after you wasted pots of mana confirming that Lex hadn't somehow ensnared Lake you feel confident that he's actually a person. What behavior - what algorithm, exactly, are you changing? Apologizing without actually doing anything differently going forward is just manipulation."

    She flushes bright red, looking down at her food, but she can't rightfully ignore it since—Pevensie is London. He has every right to—to be like that at her, as much as anyone does. "I've been a bitch," is what she decides to say—which admission makes even Jermaine flinch a bit, not to mention the other juniors. "So I'd like to not be a bitch."

(Don't mind Scorpius, here, he'll just be looking at Edmund with a little bit of a goofy expression on his face while he reaches down to squeeze Edmund's leg affectionately.)

"Okay, good start. You were in fact being a bitch. You decided that Lex was a maleficer based on zero evidence, then decided that the only reason Scorpius could possibly actually like him was because he had been ensnared somehow. Once you had confirmed that he hadn't, I'm willing to bet you still tried to convince Scorpius to drop him until he tore into you, because you're very carefully not looking at him right now. What you might want to change going forward is how you look at people, and recognize that they are people. I am not, actually, 'London'. I'm Edmund. Hi! I have feelings and interests other than the good of my clave, just like you do! This is Lex, he's indie, he's pure mana, he's a bit of an ass but when I actually engaged with him as a person he turned out to be smart and funny and completely disinterested in politics, and I like to think we're becoming friends. Maybe, instead of expecting him to forgive you, you should try to be worth forgiving."

    At that she raises her eyes again, staring at Edmund with her mouth literally hanging open for the duration, torn between outrage and embarrassment and guilt.

        But a couple of seconds of (painful, agonizing) silence, the other New York kid, Jermaine, gives out a long, low whistle. "I see what you like about him," he tells Scorpius.

"He's great," Scorpius agrees, still looking a little bit dazed. "They're both great." Other hand can squeeze Lex's (overly-bony) thigh affectionately. "This was a great decision. Well done, past Scorpius, you got yourself some great boys."

    And Chloe does actually look at Scorpius when he says that, then at Edmund, and finally at Lex again, before she chews on her bottom lip. "Yeah. Yeah I—yeah." She lowers her eyes to her food once more, too much mortification going on, and adds, "I'll try that."

"Grand!" Edmund starts in on his food.

Lex looks somewhat shellshocked. "...yeah, thanks. Um. Both of you."

Lex deserves a kiss on his cheek. And so does Edmund.

He is very happy he found himself some excellent boys.

Eeeee.

"On that happy note, what the fuck were you doing last night, don't think I forgot about our scheduled yelling."

"I went patrolling!" he says immediately. "I already told you!" He has gotten enough of his energy back after the shower and this fun exchange to manage to keep nearly all guilt out of his voice. Of course, the lady doth still protest too much.

    "You go patrolling at night?" asks one of the hangers-on that sat with them.

"Sometimes!"

"Not twice in a week," Edmund says. "Not on any kind of regular basis. What's different?"

Okay now he has to look down away from Edmund, at his food, and maybe put some of it in his face before saying, "Maybe I was just bored."

Chloe and Jermaine are looking between them in open fascination (especially Chloe, it's very good that she is no longer the current target of Edmund Pevensie).

"There are other cures for boredom. You're a teenager, I'm sure you know a few."

Jermaine is squinting at Scorpius, though, and eventually something clicks in his head. Or at least he seems to think so, with the way his eyes go wide and he leans back on his chair, covering his mouth with a hand to hide the smirk that's threatening to split his face in two.

But Scorpius himself is not looking up, and instead he whines, "Come onnnnn are you really gonna make me sayyyy iiiiit."

"I've no bloody idea what you're talking about, so yes."

He keeps his eyes low, chewing on his lower lip a bit for a second or two. "I was... making up. For. Uh. Lost time." Some food for a break, still not looking up. "Since I didn't... patrol. At all. During work period yesterday."

    "Lake you are such a mess," says Jermaine from behind his hand.

Lex boggles.

"...Lake," Edmund begins. "You don't -"

Lex interrupts him immediately. "You need to make up for enjoying yourself?"

That either caused a flareup on Lex's doom aura or people are just that scared of Lex yelling at his boyfriend, because everyone else flinches away from him—except for Jermaine, who is still holding back snickers.

"I wouldn't put it like that," Scorpius says, a bit miserably. "And what's so funny?"

    "Nuh uh," says Jermaine, "don't use me as a distraction, bro, this is between you and your boyfriends."

"Oh, I'm sure you wouldn't put it like that. You just know in your heart that you've got to make up for existing, so naturally if you're enjoying yourself something's wrong and you'd better say fifty bloody Hail Marys and go kill an argonet, no?"

(In case Scorpius had ideas about getting sympathy from Edmund: nope!)

Yeah no he is pretty sure he's shafted, here.

"I, um. It's." He look up at Lex, finally, and shrugs unhappily. "No one else will do it if I don't."

(The surrounding tables have gone suspiciously silent. So much goss from that table, they're lapping it all up.)

"Because everyone else who thinks like you do is dead, and if you keep skipping sleep so will you be! D'you think your bloody lightsaber's going to save you if you accidentally mix muriatic acid and phosphorous chloride in lab and melt your lungs out?"

"I, uh, today's a Saturday? So I have no lab?" Okay even to him that sounded weak as hell. He looks down at his half-eaten breakfast and scratches his cheek. "I'm used to skipping sleep. Every now and then. And, and, and I'm not sure what you want me to do instead," he says, his voice dropping down into almost a whisper by the end of the sentence.

"I want you to behave like a bloody human being," Lex says. "Do you do a single thing that isn't saving people or fucking them?"

(Jermaine has a coughing fit right then, and Scorpius throws him a glare.)

"I also go to class and do homework," he mumbles. The bare minimum of it. "And you're not, I mean, look, every mal I kill is one fewer mal out there and other people have just as much to do with their lives as I do. I'm not great at maths but I think it adds up."

"It doesn't. Every mal you kill is another mal bubbling up from the graduation hall. We've all seen the mural; they're not literally endless, but they might as well be. And call me selfish, but I care about you more than I care about ever-so-slightly thinning their ranks."

"...it's not slight. They're all out, at night. It was dozens of them, not as many as the other day in your room but—" He cuts himself off and rubs a hand against his scalp. "Seven hundred kids. Is how many more kids are alive right now in the school than would be normal for June."

"And when will it be enough? When does stopping for a second not mean killing someone? When - when do you get to rest?"

His silence might be answer enough.

    "But, but you're not—I mean, when you're—" Chloe can't quite say "out of the Scholomance". You just don't say that, not here. It's just not done.

"Look, there's... there's one thing I do well, one thing I, one good thing I can do for everyone. How would I just—stop—"

        "You might need a spell to fix your hearing, brother," says Jermaine, no longer looking very amused. "He said rest, not stop."

Edmund shakes his head. "If you put it down for a second, you're afraid you'll never pick it up again," he says. "That's why you have to punish yourself for it."

"When we graduate, Lake," Lex says casually, "I am going to fly across the Atlantic and challenge your mother to a fucking honor duel."

Chloe gasps aloud when Lex says that, but Scorpius is actually startled into laughter.

"What does Magistra Rhys have to do with it?"

"Yes, I'll bet that Magistra Rhys has nothing to do with her son's psychological issues. Actually, no, sarcasm withdrawn, I'll bet she does at least want nothing to do with them. What was the last thing she said to you, anyway? Remember your responsibilities? Or just I'll have my people talk to yours?"

He covers his mouth and shakes his head. "If anything I'm doing this to spite her. She, she wants me to be her heir. She wanted me to lead the New York kids in here, and to take my place with her when—if I got out." He looks at Edmund, then, chewing on his lower lip. "You asked me about duty, the other day. You're wrong, I'm not... afraid I'll stop. I have a duty—to everyone. Not my enclave," and another gasp from Chloe and a couple of other people listening in, although Jermaine is nodding along with that, "everyone. That's why, okay? Because it's my duty."

"Then - it'll never be enough. You'll never be happy in your life. And anyone with the bad luck to love you will just have to watch you suffer."

"I'm not—suffering, I think that's overstating the—"

    "Brother, did you also feel like you had to make up for the time we fucked?" asks Jermaine, and Chloe nearly falls off her chair with how quickly she swivels to gawk at him. "Yeah, yeah, guess I'm coming out, don't make this about me Rasmussen."

"I, uh, no?" says Scorpius.

    "Didn't think so. And everyone else, yeah? You sleep and eat and go to class and do homework and shag people and you don't make up for any of it. Why is it that when you got two great people in your corner like that you need to make up for that?"

"—I." But he doesn't complete that sentence because he has no idea why.

"...I don't want you to - stop helping people. If that's what you're worried about. I just want you to stop hurting yourself when you're happy."

"You are all so overdramatic."

    "You spent your weight allowance on a lightsaber."

"Point taken." He looks at Edmund. "I. Am not sure what to say or do here. Um." Then he looks at Lex: "I'm sorry. I don't really know how to..."

    "Be a person?" suggests Jermaine.

"I think I liked you better when you were still star struck about me."

    "No you didn't."

"No I didn't."

"Of course you don't know how to be a fucking person, I have to do everything myself."

"Excuse me, I'm working on it too."

"As if you know how to be a person. No, as always it falls to me."

Chloe covers a giggle with her hand, and Scorpius says, "Are you perhaps thinking that we are three drowning fools trying to keep each other afloat?"

    "You will not catch me dead saying that," she replies promptly, and stuffs some food into her face before it gets hopelessly cold.

"Hey! I'm not drowning, I'm in great shape. I am a pillar of the community."

    "Lake is a pillar too and see where that's gotten him," says Jermaine.

"Were you gonna ask me something?" says Scorpius, rolling his eyes.

    "Wha?"

"When you got here you had a look on your face, I'm pretty sure you wanted to ask me something." Yeah see how you like being the center of attention now.

    "Oh. Uh. I mean, it can wait, uh..." Jermaine is too black to properly blush but he sure looks like he wants to.

"Sure it can but if you can dish it you can take it, your turn to be the gossip."

    "I've been gossip all year," he moans.

"Your fault for wanting to get into a love triangle."

Edmund grins. "Did you perhaps have questions about our love triangle."

    Jermaine hides his face behind his hand again. "Maybe! Kinda! Um."

        "—wait are you into Geoff?" asks Chloe.

    "Oh come on I'm not that obvious—wait is this about my coming out earlier, I'm bi not gay—"

"So your little competition with Geoff for Theodosia's affections—uh, Geoff is a boy from Atlanta," Scorpius explains, mostly for Edmund's sake since this is junior year gossip, "and Theodosia is one of our top alchemists this year, she's from Portland, and she has been having a lot of fun not deciding which of the boys she wants to be with—"

    "Yes yes I'm into Geoff too," sighs Jermaine.

"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.

Scorpius still hasn't finished his history paper but he can... probably... knock it out today. Yes? With the added motivation of when he's done he can properly snuggle his boyfriends.

But speaking of snuggling, a few minutes into their study session Jermaine walks into the library... with Geoff and Theodosia. They're not holding hands but they're very much walking together as a little trio, there. Jermaine offers them—Lex in particular—two thumbs up before the probable new throuple makes its way to the Atlanta kids.

"Seems like your advice worked rather faster than expected," Scorpius says, poking Lex and gesturing towards Jermaine & company.

"Honestly I think if you've been tangled between two people that long and haven't made up your mind, the answer should be obvious. But some people need a push."

"Well, it was as far as anyone else knew Theodosia who was so tangled and indecisive but the whole thing does look different under this new light, doesn't it?"

"Oh, I was talking about her. Should've taken the initiative. If you want two boys you should try to have two boys."

Scorpius grins. "Maybe she didn't figure she could keep them if they weren't dating each other. Which is silly but seems to have been resolved to everyone's satisfaction."

"Speaking of silliness - Lex, can we speak? Privately."

"...sure?"

They exit the snuggle and head out of earshot.

"What's up?"

"I have been desperately horny since the night Scorpius saved me, and I need him - and optionally you - to fuck me now. Do you have a private location you can drag us off to, I'd ask Scorpius myself but for some reason you're less embarrassing, don't ask me why."

Lex cackles.

Eventually he wheezes to a stop. "Yeah, I've got a carrel back in the stacks in the Sanskrit section. Does that suit your tastes?"

"Yes, yes it does. Help me drag Scorpius away without notifying everyone in the reading room of our intentions?"

Lex heads back over to the New Yorkers. "Lake," he says, "come on, secret triad business. We're plotting doom and you're the only one who can stop us."

    Tebow opens his mouth to say something but this time it's Chloe who says, "Come on, Magnus, even I can tell that's a joke. Lighten up."

"What she said," says Scorpius to the grumbling Magnus, but he gets up easily enough. He's almost done with this history assignment anyway so he can take a break now. Reward for his hard work and all that.

Lex collects Edmund and leads the three of them through the stacks. Aramaic, Coptic, Classical Chinese - there's Sanskrit. He takes a sharp right, and, yes, there's the bastard. He strokes the blond wood of the desk, then turns and raises his arms.

"Welcome to my demesne!" he says grandly. "Entirely unknown to lesser men. Perfect for plotting, perfecting my dark arts, and secret rendezvous. Not that I've had many of the latter up to now."

"You are a strange little man," Edmund opines, reaching to unbutton his shirt.

"That is one beautiful desk," says Scorpius, walking over to it. "I heard it was quite difficult to find these. How'd you manage it?"

But despite the nonchalance of his words, when he turns around the visible strain in his trousers reveals he is not altogether oblivious to the reason why he's been dragged to this secret of secret places. (Edmund unbuttoning his shirt may have helped him reach this conclusion.)

"I befriended it like a skittish horse," Lex says archly, beginning to strip. "I hope you have some more of that potion for Edmund. He seemed very intent on you fucking him 'til he couldn't walk."

Edmund blushes furiously, but continues his journey to nudity. (He folds each article of clothing neatly on top of the desk when it's off him.)

(explicit content starts here; skip)

"Oh yes I have a ton of it. I just used to keep the four vials on me for, you know, emergencies, and such." He feels like this neat "everyone strips then they fuck" narrative has run its course, though, and steps over to Edmund to wrap an arm around him, one hand to asscheek and the other to cock. "You look adorable like this," he adds, before kissing Edmund.

Edmund kisses back! Enthusiastically! And also grinds against Scorpius like a desperate teenager, which to be fair he is.

Lex steps behind Edmund and nibbles at the back of his neck.

...that's hot. Like he's had threesomes before but—he doesn't even know, maybe it's his boyfriends pleasuring each other like that, but—

—whatever. He pulls away from the kiss a bit to say, into Edmund's skin, "You might need some, ah, reasonable amount of prep. To take me in. The potion helps but, uh." The hand of his that is grabbing Edmund's cock meaningfully rubs it against his own still-clothed length. His considerable length. And girth.

Edmund makes a little whining noise into Scorpius' collarbone and makes a shaky-handed attempt on his fly. He himself is rock-hard and leaking precum fairly copiously. "I - give me the potion? And Lex can help."

"Oh, fine," Lex says around a mouthful of Edmund's shoulder. "Volunteer me, why don't you."

The hand Scorpius has on Edmund's ass can very easily serve to squeeze Lex's dick once. "We are operating under the assumption here that anyone may withdraw consent at any and all points for any reasons, yes?" he says, but then he lets go to go of both of his boys to go fetch his convenient buttsex potions. And start undoing his trousers' fly while at it.

"Yes, yes, consent is multivalent and essential and must not be elided or assumed, please do not turn into my mother now."

Edmund turns to kiss Lex while Scorpius is distracted. "Shut up," he advises during a breath.

"You shut up."

When Scorpius turns around with flasks in hand and trousers being swiftly kicked off he freezes in place, mouth hanging lightly open. "Oh, I approve of this so much," he says, his free hand immediately reaching down so he can stroke himself sort of absently while watching his boyfriends kiss.

"He approves!"

"Hmmm. I wonder..."

Edmund drops to his knees and gives Lex's cock a cautious lick, looking to Scorpius for further approval.

Fuck okay he leans most of his weight back on the desk and starts jerking himself off with more feeling. Trousers off shoes off he can deal with his socks and T-shirt later. He doesn't leak as much precum as Edmund does but a fair amount nevertheless, and after he places the vials on the desk to free up a hand he goes at it with both hands.

Edmund snags one of the vials and downs it before returning to his work.

He's inexpert, and Lex is big enough that this means he's mostly just licking and stroking with occasional forays into sucking around the head, not really properly sucking him off. But he knows enough to keep his teeth out of it, and he's clever and experimentally inclined.

Lex is not complaining! At all!

The potion feels weird inside. Shivery? Tingly? Like it's going all the way down his entire body and—it's really quite indescribable. But his muscles, especially the relevant ones, do sure feel more relaxed. Also his gag reflex may be a bit less?

Scorpius decides taking the potion himself is not a bad idea regardless of plans so he gets himself one of the vials but then it's back to jerking off. "The two of you look so hot like that," he murmurs. His eyes show the truth of it, too, running all the way from Lex's face down to Edmund's ass, as does his tongue, licking his lips with a lot of appreciation.

Edmund removes Lex's cock from his mouth long enough to say "I completely bungled this but in my defense it was right there - Lex, come on, over here -"

He positions Lex across the desk from him and bends over to start sucking him again, this time giving Scorpius a much better view of his ass and the erection dangling heavily between his legs, dripping on the varnished wood.

Ohhhh this is great his boys are great this is so hot—

"I've a mind to take you from behind while you blow Lex," he says, straightening up from his resting position to walk over to Lex and kiss him. And if his dick pokes Edmund on the cheek or something, that is not entirely accidental.

Kiss!!!! While his dick is getting sucked!

Edmund elects, in lieu of verbal assent, to reach behind himself and pull one cheek aside as a sort of visual invitation.

Scorpius sees that and pulls away from the kiss to giggle. "I'm gonna need a bit to loosen you up so I hope you're enjoying having your mouth stuffed with dick for the moment," he says. He gives Lex another quick kiss and then walks over behind Edmund's ass and kneels down so he can inspect it from up close.

With his tongue.

He twitches, but not unhappily, and hums around Lex's prick. 

He hasn't eaten ass in a while—for some reason other people don't tend to trust him with random potions even when they're fucking—so he'll savor the moment for a bit.

...only a bit, though. He does need to use his fingers to get Edmund ready. Starting with one, he has no idea how much Edmund has played with himself there in the past and it wouldn't do to go with too much even if the potion's relaxation effects would help a lot.

He seems happy about one finger!

Scorpius will jerk Edmund off at the same time; some people (himself included) can do with only anal stimulation but he doesn't know if Edmund is one of them. And then Scorpius can move on to two fingers! And then maybe three! Four will be when he deems Edmund to be Sufficiently Prepped, and while he'd like to be fucking Edmund right now with his actual cock he's not not having fun with the fingering, especially with how Edmund seems to appreciate it so much. But if he tries to go all in it will probably be less fun so, patience.

Edmund wiggles about two fingers, but at three he pulls off of Lex to gasp "Give me a minute to - get used to that -"

"Take all the time you need, love," he says, giving Edmund's dick a squeeze and his asscheek a kiss. Then he looks up at Lex. "Doing alright there?"

Continued happy whimpering! It kind of looks like he's generating mana off not cumming yet.

He gets enough capacity back from the direct question and Edmund's mouth leaving his cock to haphazardly start scritching Edmund's head. 

"I still think you must be breaking some law being this cute."

He continues to massage Ed's muscles, paying particular attention to his prostate of course, while his other hand jerks Ed off just enough to keep him hard. It wouldn't do to have him come too early, now, would it?

Eventually Edmund says "O-oh - okay - I would really like you to fuck me -"

"Your wish," he says, giving Edmund's cock one last squeeze and his asscheek a small nibble. Then he gets back on his feet and stretches his legs a bit. He has to stroke himself for a second to get back fully up, but not too much, even with zero stimulation this whole situation is just too hot. Then he places the tip of his dick right at Edmund's entrance, one hand helping aim it and another holding Edmund's ass. "Let me know if you want me to stop," he murmurs, and starts slooowly pushing in.

Edmund stops him a couple of times to adjust, but mostly what he does is cling to the desk, humping desperately against the wood occasionally, and occasionally moan loudly around Lex's cock.

Scorpius is thicker around the middle, so by the time that's past he can get all the way to the base. One of his hands is petting Edmund's back and running his nails lightly against him, while the other is still holding onto his hip. "Okay, there, love?" he says, although clearly from his face he is having a fairly similar time of it.

He feels like such a meme for thinking this but: god he's tight.

His mouth is still full but also he's making muffled noises at increasing frequency, and tightening in spasms around Scorpius.

Lex's fingers tighten in Edmund's hair and he thrusts and shakes like a leaf as he finally lets go.

Which clearly tips Edmund over the edge, because now he's even tighter and cum is splattering against Scorpius' legs as he fires a load all over the desk and its environs.

"Oh fuck," he says when he notices that, and the sight is—not quite enough to drive him over the edge, himself, but he can thrust a few more times and "Oh fuuuuuuuck," is what he moans, loudly, as he pulls Edmund's ass against his hips and stays there, shooting his loads one after another into him.

He takes a moment to appreciate the fact that he never took his shirt or socks off. Such a meme.

Edmund is now a puddle. (He's also in a puddle, but he can't bring himself to care about that right now.)

Lex breathes heavily for a few seconds, then withdraws from Edmund's throat considerately before - shaking his head vigorously and sitting upright on the desk, bare ass on the wood. He puts a hand on Edmund's shoulder and shakes him gently. "Come on, Pevensie, no time for afterglow. Don't forget we're in a deathtrap."

"Yes but I'm a," and he stops and looks over his shoulder where they came from. Nothing there. He shakes his head then turns to the other two again. "I'm a weapon of mass destruction," he finishes.

Edmund groans and sits up anyway. "Bad habits, though, he's right. No happysnuggles in unwarded spaces."

Scorpius laughs and shakes his head. ...then he gets rid of his shirt and socks because he feels ridiculous in them with the other two naked. "We could set some shields up. Or go back to one of our rooms. For snuggles." But he lowers down to Edmund to give him a kiss on the temple. "And let me know how nice the cupcake Susan will give you later tastes."

"Bastard," Edmund groans.

"If you set up some shields we can in fact snuggle," Lex allows.

Wonderful! Scorpius looks around them again, and up just in case even though the library does not have a ceiling mals can drop down from, and squints in the direction of the main hall of the library for a second, then shakes his head a second time and sets up some shields.

And then: snuggles.

Yes fine snuggles. On a sticky desk.

He'll give Lex some more attention now because he feels that blowjob notwithstanding he has focused a bit too much on Ed, but fortunately he has two hands with which to pet both boyfriends. Petpetpetpet. And kiss.

His boyfriends are great. This is great.

Lex seems perfectly content to remain ensnuggled until something happens. The lunch bell? Someone needing the loo? Whatever. Until then: snuggle.

Scorpius lifts his head once to look at the direction of the library proper again.

...then again.

And a third time. "Can you guys hear that?"

"...no?"

"...I don't think - maybe? I can't tell what it is, though."

He sits up.

Then he stands up.

Then he stands up, as if something sent a jolt of adrenaline up his spine, and he's moving already with a, "Stay here."

"That was a-" Edmund starts. Then Scorpius is moving. "Hey! Where are you going?"

"- okay I heard that - Lake what are you doing I'm coming with you obviously -"

He looks over his shoulder but keeps walking at a fairly brisk pace. "Just stay there I can't watch both of you while—I know you can handle yourselves just please—" and he's around a corner.

"Absolutely not - come on Pevensie -" Lex is on his feet in seconds and following him.

Edmund grabs his wrist. "What are you doing? Lake's going to be fine, mals avoid him, they don't avoid us. We're behind shields. Stay behind the shields. Protect me if you must."

"Fuck you. Come with me and I'll protect you but I'm not staying behind the shields like some kind of fucking damsel. Come along or don't."

He wrenches his arm free and storms away into the stacks.

Lacking options, Edmund guesses he will follow! Naked!

When they go around the corner Scorpius is there ahead of them!

...........rather farther ahead than he should by rights be. Unless he sprinted while they weren't looking then slowed down. And unless, uh, the stacks got stretched longer than they usually are. Which they... probably did actually.

Lex continues storming ahead. He can't run, not without his boots - he's not an idiot. He has to keep an eye on the floor. Which gives the shelves plenty of time to stretch. Which gives Scorpius plenty of time to get farther and farther away, because this fucking place hates him.

They can all hear what Scorpius was hearing, now. Faint screams. Great.

Lex snaps at Edmund, "Keep your eyes on the shelves."

"I'm barefoot. I'm keeping an eye on the floor."

"I'm already doing that, you twit, keep an eye on the shelves so they can't keep us walking through the stacks forever!"

"Fuck. Fine but if my feet get digested I'm blaming you."

Edmund stares at the shelves, not paying enough attention to the words on the spines to read anything but recording the look of each section in his mind so he can tell that they're walking past new shelves every time. Which they almost certainly weren't a few seconds ago. Lex was right again, dammit.

The school is definitely trying to stall. For some reason. Scorpius is out of sight now, and while some of the shrieks involve the fact that he's barging into the main library reading room naked, most of them are about whatever's attacking kids there.

Right there. In plain view. In the library. This shouldn't happen. The library is meant to be safe, or at least safer than this, not just because of numbers but because it has no ceiling and because of the open space and good illumination and plain old because people believe it should be safer. Less safe in the stacks, where the floating lights get darker if you're not paying attention until they wink out and you're forced to spend your own mana to light the way and by then who knows where you are.

Less safe in the stacks, where... even as Edmund is looking, even as they are in fact walking past new shelves every time, these new shelves are probably shelves that weren't there when they came this way last. There is more space between books that used to be right next to each other, the Scholomance grabbing books out of the Void to fill in that space. Flashes of red and violet light appear at the distant end of the aisle—Scorpius has probably joined the fray—and the school is still fetching more and more books, in the dark, when they're not looking, to try to keep Lex and Edmund away.

"- Lex we need to swap places. I don't know this section and we need someone who knows what's supposed to be here. I can take a digester if I have to."

Lex lets Edmund slip past him and starts counting spines. "Fuck you, that's never been here before - you can't fool me you son of a bitch - god, the labels on these are ancient, the school's pulling shit out of absolutely - hello?"

Lex actually stops walking for half a second.

Edmund reaches behind and grabs his hand. "We are not getting separated."

"No, it's -"

Lex takes Edmund's hand and points at one of the books that just appeared.

It's—gold. Probably gold? Gilded. A thin volume, almost entirely hidden between two heaped stacks of palm-leaf manuscripts, on a high shelf.

No label at all.

No label at all, which means it's been freshly pulled from the Void, never having been seen in these shelves before. A book that had probably wandered off only a decade after being copied and only just now deigned to exist again.

Edmund snatches it off the shelf and holds it close. "Now move," he says. "We're not treasure-hunting."

They move.

The aisle does start to move somewhat quicker, after that. The school probably doesn't want to hand them any more prizes like that, they're costly, but it can't literally create books out of thin air so it has to find something. It seems to have decided that whatever the reason it had to keep the two away from the main fight is not worth keeping them here where they might find more treasures.

They move, and despite the darkened aisle they are now close enough that they can properly see the distance to the main incantations aisle. And the screams are louder, too, and other noises can be heard: a high-pitched birdlike shrill, and a lower snarl, and a sound like wind through leaves that can only have come out of a manifestation-class mal. And that's when they can hear Scorpius call, "Tebow, put down a slickshield!" which is only useful against ooze-class mals, who by and large make no sound at all. That makes at least four mals in the library, all at once.

"It's a fucking graduation party."

Edmund turns just as a flash of red illuminates the aisle. He stops.

"Lex."

Lex does not like that tone of voice. "What."

"Turn around."

Lex turns around.

Somehow, he already knows what he's going to see.

The only thing worse than everything else.

The library air vents are in the aisles, set in the floor. They catch the light when you're walking, even the faint light from distant spell lights.

There isn't one behind them. Not a visible one. Not the faint sound of the wind passing through it, the tinny echo from the vents that pretended they made physical sense to provide students with the feeling that they should have air. The aisle lights there are out completely, but the flashes from the fight should show it.

They don't.

What they show instead is the only thing worse than everything else. Half a dozen human eyes watching both of them, spread over the translucent slime that was just slipping its way out of the vent. The eyes shift and rotate in place, lazily, tracking Lex and Edmund at the same time, seeing and unseeing. And the mouths, so many mouths opening and closing. Some gasping for air, some panting, some still locked in an eternal unheard scream, whatever passes for the vocal cords of the people this creature has eaten long since rotted away.

"Lex. We have to run."

Lex doesn't respond.

"Lex."

"Run," Lex says. "Get out of here."

His eyes are wide, and he's shaking like a leaf. He raises one trembling hand to the crystal on a chain around his neck.

An iridescent, shimmering field pops into existence along his skin, and Lex takes a step toward the monster.

The occasional cracks of light from the fight farther ahead continue to be their only way to see, but that's enough to show how little the maw-mouth is moving. Some of its eyes, stolen from many victims, blink. Brown eyes, blue eyes, green eyes, gliding and flowing within the mass of the creature, into it and out of it, as the enormous ooze continues to try to slip out of the vent.

No one really knows what happens to the people who are eaten by a maw-mouth. Which is a cute way of saying that no one wants to acknowledge what probably happens. Directing a communications spell to maw-mouth victims receives a response, although usually just incoherent screaming, especially the older victims. The centuries-old victims. All of the people this monster of monsters has eaten over its existence, and even all of the mals it has eaten, probably still there, still conscious, still suffering and being tortured.

It blinks with some of its eyes, and breathes heavily with some of its mouths, and doesn't try to stop Lex—but it doesn't attack him either. If it tries to eat him, it will have to digest him, and that is just not worth it. What is worth it, however, is sliding along towards the other end of this aisle, going away from the four mals fighting in the library proper (four mals that were probably fleeing from it) and towards the first-year dorms. Stretching itself along the first-year hallway just before lunch, sticking its long slimy tentacles under each door for a meal of dozens, maybe hundreds of children. Grabbing Lex would be wasteful; much better to go for the feast.

Lex snarls.

"No," he says, and he goes from taking individual steps to running. It's only a few seconds before he slams into the maw-mouth at a dead sprint.

"No!" Edmund says, for very different reasons.

There are ways to kill a maw-mouth. Not many; maybe not any other than the one. You get in, with a good and strong enough shield, and you walk all the way to its core, and you unmake it from there. That's only happened thrice, ever, as far as anyone knows, and every time it's been done by a circle of wizards, and with heavy casualties. The most a single wizard can do is distract it, keep it still for a moment to keep it away from whatever it's going after. Not even established enclaves try anything else; if a maw-mouth shows up at your door, you hunker down, close up entrances, and try to throw enough other mals at it that it's satisfied with a meal and moves on to hunt somewhere else.

When Lex collides with it, it changes its mind. Might as well, mightn't it? It stretches a tentacle shape out of its otherwise shapeless mass, and wraps it around Lex's waist, and pulls him in.

It feels horrible.

Even through the shield, it feels like a big sweaty stranger just hugged him whole, too tight and too close. The mouths around him start whispering umintelligible non-words, in every direction, and he is well and trapped. You can't cut a maw-mouth, you can't burn a maw-mouth, you can't freeze a maw-mouth. There's always more of it. There's more of it, and it's everywhere, and the only thing Lex's shield does for him is prevent him from being immediately digested.

So, here's the thing.

Lex knows that what he's doing is objectively stupid.

He knows that a maw-mouth is basically invulnerable except for its core. He knows that he'll have to travel through an infinity of folded space to get there, that he'll want to die the whole time. That he can't imagine how horrible it is.

He doesn't have to imagine anymore. It's horrible. It's the worst thing that could possibly happen.

He swims through an endless mass of flesh. Energy seeps into his shield, a constant stream, as it keeps him from a fate far worse than death. The flesh shapes itself chaotically, a protean sea of organs, tongues, stranger and worse things. Blood flows around him.

And he hits something. Something solid.

And -

here's the thing.

Lex knows that maw-mouths are the worst thing that has ever existed. But... that's not quite true.

Lex knows that he's worse.

You can't cut a maw-mouth. You can't burn a maw-mouth. You can't freeze a maw-mouth.

Lex doesn't have to do any of it. What he has to do is grip his Radiant Mind crystal, and reach into his stash, his carefully accumulated mana from three years of working and learning and saving, saving at every opportunity and every turn, and -

one of the simplest major spells in the world, La Main de la Mort, is also one of the deadliest. You say à la mort, and you flick your wrist, and what is before you dies. But you have to have a certain attitude. You must do it carelessly. Not fearfully. Not furiously. Carelessly.

Right now, Lex can't bring himself to care about anything. His blood is cold in his veins. His mind is blank. His heart is still.

Lex flicks his wrist. "A la mort," he drawls. The flesh around him putrefies instantly and horribly, rotting and shriveling, but the core stays whole.

So he does it again.

And he does it again.

And he casts his Coptic spell, his cleaning spell, his organic disintegrator. It burns at the rot, and it eats through a good amount of flesh too before sputtering out, choked.

He casts a little Old English number, one that peels someone's flesh away from their bones into the Void. There's no bones to be had here, but peel the spell does, peeling and shriveling at the reams and oceans and hillocks of meat.

And again, "A la mort."

"A la mort."

And -

Lex knows one spell that other people can use.

It's a variable-effect spell. In the hands of a freshman, it's a lighter. In the hands of a senior, it's a flamethrower.

Lex has never used it.

You can't burn a maw-mouth. But how hard have they tried?

"Ignis, veni."

Not that hard.

The pieces—the people inside it, the targets of his spells—all killed, one by one, removing all of the support of the maw-mouth, all of the bits it is made of. And the core?

It burns.

The maw-mouth breaks apart over his head, all at once, all that was keeping it together going as if only held in place by a membrane that popped under the strain. All of the flesh, the mouths, the eyes, all of it burns and then melts, turning into a puddle at his feet and disintegrating down the vent it just came from. It's been barely two steps from where he made first contact with the thing, in the space outside. He's surrounded by blood and bile and liquefying organs and pieces of people, and all of it is getting efficiently drained away down the slight slope built into the aisle for an occasion just as this.

When the vent starts to choke on the sheer quantity, the sprayers floating higher above them, almost always hidden out of sight (and not on the ceiling, for there is no ceiling) kick in automatically with loud grinding thump, and that is enough to deal with the task of draining away all of the evidence of a maw-mouth's worth of death.

Lex - stops the flames.

Drops the shield.

Gore sluices around his bare feet, and he finally allows himself to puke. The drain takes care of that too.

A hand touches his back, the stale water pouring down and flowing around it. "Μνήμη, γλυκιά, βαρετή. Μνήμη, ξεθωριάζει."

And -

he knows that he just did something. That something happened to him, the worst thing that's ever happened to him. He knows what it was. Swimming through the bowels of the maw-mouth. Killing and killing and killing. The kind of nightmare you don't wake up from.

But... it's not the kind of thing that matters. The memories are dull. Uninteresting. Like they happened ten years ago.

He turns to Edmund.

"Why," he croaks, his throat dry from chanting.

"Because you didn't need the chance to say you'd be fine and I should save my mana," Edmund says matter-of-factly. "Are you hurt?"

"No."

"How much did you spend?"

"All of it."

"It'll be okay," Edmund says, and wraps his arms around him.

Which is when Scorpius shows back up, partly covered in soot and the leftovers of some mal or other.

...Lex also has leftovers of some mal or other. The floor is wet. There's—bits and remains of putrefying organs and blood and, and—

He rushes over to his boyfriends and hovers anxiously. "What happened?"

"There... was... a maw-mouth."

"What do you need? —what does he need? How can I—help—?"

Because of course Lex can kill a maw-mouth. And because of course the reason those four enormous maleficaria were back there at all was because of the maw-mouth.

"I dulled the memory. He's still got enough adrenaline running through him to kill a horse. You can help by picking him up and taking him back to the carrel."

Edmund's voice is wholly even, because if it weren't he'd be acknowledging things he doesn't have the mental space for right now.

He nods twice and—gently, okay, he can be gentle, and he can try to carry Lex down the aisles.

Lex's head lolls back like he doesn't have the strength to keep it upright. He's shivering, too.

Edmund follows. "I don't... I've done what I can as mental healing goes. My affinity's pretty specific."

"We can—figure it out. Just need some time." He falters and loses his footing, but manages to regain it against a bookshelf before he drops Lex. "I'm, uh, not at a hundred percent after the fight."

"He's at zero."

"Yeah I know. Just mean—will need—a couple of breaks on the way there."

Hyup back they go.

"mumblemumble"

"Sorry, didn't—catch that," he says between panting, and here he needs a break again.

"don't have to," Lex mumbles. "'ll be fine"

"Only enough space," pant, "for one self-sacrificing idiot in this vee." Pant pant. "Triad? Throuple? Who knows."

Onwards thank goodness the library is no longer stretching the aisles and the lights are strong again.

"You know that's not true," Edmund says.

"Trying to," pant pant, "will it to be true."

Edmund shakes his head a bit miserably. "If we still had our clothes I'd be able to give you a strength enhancer potion."

He shakes his head but opts to save his breath and keep walking. And a couple of breaks later, they're back to where they left their clothes and all the evidence of their earlier activities.

Edmund - gets to the desk, checks on the wards -

collapses against the side of it and starts crying, very quietly.

Scorpius gently lowers Lex to the ground, too, then finds some space between him and Ed to sit, and wraps both arms around them.

"This fucking place," Edmund eventually manages.

Scorpius kisses Edmund's temple. "This fucking place," he agrees, turning to look at Lex and gauge his—everything, really.

He's not dead?

He's still shivering. The shivering actually seems to be getting worse. His eyes are dry and dull.

He leans into Scorpius' touch, though, a little.

"...Lex. Please tell me how you're feeling and what I can do to help."

And Scorpius still has his arm around Lex and he's not really sure what more to do and—this fucking place.

"Empty."

"Empty," he repeats slowly, then looks at Edmund. "Is that normal? With that spell?"

"The memory spell? No. The killing a maw-mouth spell? I have no idea!"

"I meant the memory spell." Back to Lex. "Hey. Hey, love. I'm here for you. Okay? I don't know what you—wait." His crystal. The one on his neck. "Do you need mana?"

The crystal's cracked and blackened. Lex flinches at the question.

"Lex, do you have a reason for me not to give you some mana right now because if that's—I just killed four huge things."

Lex clumsily tries to scurry away.

Mana. Again, he still does not have a ton of... fine control... over how much mana he can give. And he just killed four enormous mals—he dumped enough of the mana he got from them into the sharer to not be actively glowing but he's still rather full.

Lex flares with energy. On reflex, he does - something - which causes a flash of white light and makes Scorpius feel... better? Like he didn't just have an awful experience, like he's not in a death trap filled with monsters, like he's not sitting naked on a moderately grimy library carpet.

If Edmund's reaction is anything to go by, something similar just happened to him. The color returns to his face, and he lets out a hoarse, slightly breathy laugh.

Lex undergoes the same reaction, but comes out of it looking more pissed off than anything. His spine straightens, then he deliberately re-slumps.

"You are very lucky that was the spell I was already trying to cast," he mutters.

"—oh. Oh." He giggles, and grins, and pulls Lex back into a closer, tighter hug.

"Bastard," Lex says, slightly muffled. "Won't even let me be catastrophically broken. Utter bastard."

"You're like a bloody cat," Edmund snorts, joining the hug.

"Just how much—never mind, are your crystals back in your dorm similarly fucked or can I replenish your costs, here?" And now he's back to "eeeeeee boyfriends" as his general mood. "And what was that spell?"

Lex looks solemn. "...they're not as fucked, this one's completely irreparable. But - I had thirty filled. I... I'm going to have to take inventory."

He sighs. "The spell's one of Mum's. She calls it the set-right, it's - usually it doesn't even take mana, for if you're just in a mood, it's more of a cognitive-behavioral technique on steroids. But if you cast it proper it does... more than that?"

"Fucking right it does more than that, I barely feel like crap at all. How about we get dressed and move this little party to your room and I can top you up and we can be in less grimy surroundings."

"...alright. I'm not sure even you can manage to refill thirty drained Radiant Mind crystals but I'm not going to tell you what's impossible."

Lex stands and retrieves his clothes. He also looks ruefully at the dried cum on his desk. "...Pevensie, you got a cleaning spell? I, uh, don't, and I'd like to treat the carrel with due respect."

"Σπέρμα, εξαφανίστηκε. Κάντε αυτό το γραφείο καθαρό και αγνό για άλλη μια φορά."

The desk returns to its original state.

"You don't have a cleaning spell?"

"I'm an ascetic."

"Am I allowed to translate that or do you wanna keep it a secret still?" Scorpius asks, starting to put his own clothes on too.

"Fine, yes, my affinity means the Void won't give me hardly anything that isn't, uh, gratuitously evil."

"...what's it give you if you ask for cleaning?"

"This time it was organic disintegration. Time before I got something for bleaching bone. Once I got a recipe for a 'cleanser' potion that just... ugh."

"His aura of 'everything is about to go wrong and I was having such a nice day, too' is probably as related to his affinity as my ability to take mana from mals is to mine," Scorpius adds.

"...huh. Well, your affinity just came rather in handy..."

Edmund pauses in the middle of donning his trousers and glances at Lex's face.

"We can't tell anyone about this. Can we."

"...no. Not unless we want every enclave in this school to start fighting for him or maybe trying to kill him."

"Oh, worked that one out?"

Lex leaves his shirt mostly unbuttoned. That ship has largely sailed.

"Yes, you've presumably had a bit more time to think about it. But - what's your plan, then? Or what was your plan?"

"My plan?"

"For graduation. You're an indie. You didn't have a team. How were you going to get one? If you couldn't - show off."

"I had thirty crystals. You don't know that I couldn't have - done something - shown off a little."

"...no you couldn't. You could have either shown off a little and had everyone ignore you, because they hate you, or you could have shown off a lot and - let them fight for you."

"Wasn't really... thinking that way. I guess."

"...sure."

"...so are the two of you dating, too, now, or?" Scorpius wonders, finishing up his fly and moving onto shoes.

"Frankly, I could not possibly tell you."

"Is it not usually a binary state?"

"No."

"I suppose the definition is kind of academic if we are all spending so much time together and occasionally you choke on Lex's dick."

And he is presently dressed.

Edmund is also dressed! And blushing.

"It's incredible how you still blush like a virgin even though I saw you with his cock splitting you open not an hour ago."

"Shut up."

"You looked very fetching with my cock splitting you open," Scorpius agrees.

Their belongings reacquired, they can start their way to Lex's. "Actually I saw you carrying a book earlier, what was it?" he asks Edmund. "It looked fancy."

"-oh! Right - the library was trying really hard to keep us away from you -"

Edmund picks the book off the desk where he left it. "It does look fancy," he muses. "And - no label, so... Lex, do you actually read Sanskrit?"

"No, I'm an idiot who decided to colonize a carrel in a region I don't know the -"

He stops.

"Holy shit."

"Don't open it, let's not give the library any ideas, but show us it when we're back at yours."

"...yeah. Yeah... Pevensie, give it to me, I know how to cosset a spellbook."

Edmund hands it over, squinting only slightly.

And Lex, as they walk, begins... singing. Crooning a quiet tune, barely audible over their footsteps, in what must be Welsh. He's also stroking the book, gently and in swirling loops that trace the gilding on the cover.

He has the best boyfriends. The best.

The library doesn't try to keep them this time, and the lights stay all of them on. When they emerge from the stacks to the main reading room, it's deserted: the evidence of the fight that happened there is still visible everywhere, and apparently everyone decided it was time to flee after Scorpius dealt with the whatever they were.

That's less true of the actual hallways leading downstairs to the junior res hall, though, as they do see scattered groups of people moving this way and that. By the way they look at Scorpius the news has traveled, but then again it would be more surprising had it not. Either way no one really tries to approach the trio.

In that case they can get to Lex's room with a minimum of fuss, right?

Yep here's his room!

Lex pulls the box of crystals out from under his bed, keeping the book in his other hand. He hisses in a breath when he sees them, and starts rifling through. "Drained, drained, drained... okay... it looks like I killed two-thirds of my stash."

"I'm gonna need to go through you, if I try to feed your crystals directly I think there's a pretty high chance I'll break them."

"...yeah. And - the drained crystals need to be reattuned before we can fill them. It's gonna take a while. And I don't think even you have twenty Radiant Mind crystals' worth of power in your reserves."

"Not... twenty crystals, probably, but—I think I have ten to twenty times your reserves in right now? So however many crystals that is."

"My maximum capacity is about half a crystal. Where I'm at now, about a quarter... so, hmm... if you really want to give me a boost you could fill about five."

"What's it take to reattune a drained crystal? Do you have to do it yourself?"

"No, but it's incredibly boring. You have to feed it a constant thread of mana, in and out, for about an hour. I hate it - you can't even generate mana off it, since it's magic."

"Doesn't sound that bad to me. Want me to reattune your empties?"

"Why... would you do that."

"You're my boyfriend's boyfriend, I still feel guilty about not being able to help with the maw-mouth, and you deserve nice things."

"Entirely beyond me, 'thread of mana', but I can snuggle you two while you do it. And I can do the mana transfer to you whenever, Lex, just tell me when you're ready."

"...ready," Lex says.

(Edmund appropriates the drained crystals and starts concentrating on one. It glows faintly.)

Here's a light tap of mana.

Lex starts filling his non-drained spares.

"So, now that we're good and settled down: what is that book?"

"Oh. Um."

He sets down the crystal and picks up the book and flips open the inside cover.

"Behold the Masterwork of the Wise One of Gandhara. Is what it says on the title page. So..."

Edmund sucks in a breath.

"The—isn't that the title of the guy who invented the first enclave-building spells?"

Edmund squeezes his eyes shut for a second. "Yes, Lake, the Wise Man of Gandhara was putatively the contemporary title of Purochana, the inventor of the Golden Stone Enclaves. We have here a book, decorated with pure gold, written by Purochana, with no library stamp, meaning that it is now Higgins' actual property. Lex, what... what are you going to do?"

Lex is flipping through, whispering to the book. He comes to a certain page and almost drops it, his hands shaking.

Scorpius has been mouthing "what the fuuuuuuuck" but he stops short when Lex nearly drops the book. "Is it them? Is it the actual spells? Did the library actually just give you enclave-building spells?"

"Well, that was the phase-control spell. The one that enclaves still use to this day even though it's been thousands of years. So."

Half-consciously, he takes a rag from his shelf and starts wiping down the book, removing trace amounts of dust from the gilt. He's moving only slightly robotically. 

"Holy shiiiiiiiiiit," Scorpius whispers.

"Why do you look like it killed your cat."

"I've dreamed about this book," Lex says. "I have literally had dreams wherein I learned the Golden Stone Sutras and wandered the land, building enclaves for everyone who wanted, being the next Purochana. The enclaves would fear the change I brought, but everyone else would love me."

He breathes in. "Then I grew up. This is a beautiful, powerful book. It has many incredible spells. I will use them well, and sell them to people who will pay me for them, and I will never be the man in that dream, because that man would never survive the Scholomance."

"...wouldn't he? Even if his boyfriend is Scorpius Lake the mal-killing machine? Because I gotta say I like the idea. Everyone gets an enclave—no more wise-born children needing the Scholomance for a one-in-four chance to survive, everyone in their little tucked-away corner of Void, sleeping safely..."

"Can you protect me when your mother and all of her golfing buddies send assassins after me?"

"Of course I can. I was better at this than anyone she has ever hired to protect our enclave when I was eight, I have an amount of mana capacity that makes absolutely no sense by anyone's understanding of magical theory, I may not be able to lay waste to multitudes like you but when it comes to fortifying behind a tripwire and a barrier and raining down destruction on incoming enemies this is my jam."

Lex has tears dripping down his cheeks. His eyes are wide open, though, and he's gritting his teeth.

"I can't - you can't promise that. We could go down in flames tomorrow."

He chews on his lower lip then shakes his head quickly. "I'm going to be your friend even if we don't stay together. And—and I told you what I want out of my life. Didn't I? When I pretended it was okay to talk about what comes assuming we leave this place. It's that, it's—Lex, even if I hate your guts tomorrow that could change everything. I can't... what I can't promise is that we'll live to leave this place. But if we do, I can promise you that."