"He was nine, I don't think it counted. And there was no blood."

"Mr. Jones, I haven't known Peter Pevensie that long and even I know that he absolutely meant it and if asked he would say it totally counted."

"Eric!!!!!" Edmund contributes.

"Were we going somewhere?"

"Yes, fair point, I can make fun of you along the way." Off they trot.

"...I want to introduce you two, because we're about to have tea and I'd like you to be comfortable, but causing people to know each other turns out to be difficult. Pete's a manic pixie dream boy with good anime opinions? Eric's a positive delight and auxiliary Pevensie who introduced me to the works of Terry Pratchett, altering my life irrevocably? Maybe you can work it out from there."

Eric continues to be reasonably uncomfortable whenever a Pevensie does something like "call him an auxiliary Pevensie" and will therefore ignore it.

"I'm sure you'd have run into Pratchett eventually even without me."

"Of course I would've! But - the way I did, it was that you'd told Peter about them while I was in the room, and I went to the library the next day and demanded all the Disth-World books Mr Adams had, and I read Mort even though he thought it wasn't age-appropriate, and then I could talk to you about it. Even though I barely understood half the words. And I don't think there's any other way of finding Pratchett that I could've liked more."

"You're going to make me blush," Eric says, but unfortunately he is in fact blushing so that undermines the whole effect of the phrase, really.

Pete mouths "Disth-World" to himself quietly and tries not to die from adorableness overdose imagining tiny Edmund with a lisp marching up to a poor beleaguered primary school librarian and demanding books.

     "Hello, my boy. What are you looking for today?"

Deep breath. "I need the Disthworld books, they're by Terry Patht – Prat-chett. Um, there's one about witthes and there's one about dragons and there's one about –"

     "Steady there," Mr Adams said, trying to fight a smile. "I know them. They're a bit hard for a pre-preparatory student, though. Are you sure you want to try?"

"Yes!!!! Why else would I asth for them?"

     Mr Adams turned away for a few seconds, burying his face in the card catalogue, then turned back, perfectly straight-faced. "Alright, I can get you one. Just one, though, and you need to tell your father in case he thinks it's too much."

Henry Pevensie was not going to think Discworld was too much, but he did deserve to hear his son try to pronounce it.

↑ artist's rendition

Edmund decides it is time to hold Pete's hand. He's not sure why he wasn't already.

"Anyway - hmm - Pete, you never did tell me what your conversation with Monika was like, did you? I remain curious. She employs my roommate at the school paper," he notes to Eric. "Runs him ragged, apparently."

"Must not come to the library very often, I don't think I know a Monika."

"Man, uh... I noted to Tintin that it looked like she was getting a lot more out of her conversation with me than I was, which is a very disconcerting experience I much prefer being on the other side of. She apparently just wanted to catch my vibe? And say some mysterious shit that I'm sure will be revealed to be meaningful later in the plot?

"I also ran into her after rugby, I think I mentioned, and had further plotty interactions with her in which she did some exposition about Sophie and Hywel's relationship."

"Pete is under the impression he's a protagonist," Edmund mentions. "I'm sure you know the type."

"I know the type from fiction. This is the first time I've seen anyone say this kind of thing in real life. It's charming when it's a fictional protagonist but I'm finding it quite... different..."

"It's obnoxious, is what it is. The fourth wall isn't meant to be gazed at this directly. It makes people uncomfortable."

Well Eric is certainly not going to contradict Pete here, is he?

Ed might contradict him. Via kiss. (Cheek kiss.) "It's endearing! Or I'm biased, one of those."

He turns around to kiss Ed's cheek in turn. "I think Eric might be immune to my Mysterious Allure."

He can hear the capital letters, but he never actually saw Pete's character sheet. So whatever that means, it's best to take it at face value.

"Well, I'm not. -ah, the café."

     That Vivianesque waitress, Niamh, is behind the counter again. She finger-waves. Probably ironically.

He finger-waves ironically right back. He has years of experience with his own Vivian.

"It's fifty-fifty, really, whether it works or not. It depends on how well the wind and the light catch my hair. But that's okay, not being the center of attention is the spice of life."

Eric squints at him.

"Somewhere between forty and seventy percent of everything that comes out of my mouth is bullshit of one or another kind," he explains helpfully.

He's not sure what he expected Edmund's type to have been but it was not really this. Well, he supposes the boy's got force of personality going for him.

"Eric, what're you getting? And Pete. Then we can decide on something to drink."