A Few Self-Indulgent Scenes with Edmund

[illicitresearch]

Who: Zexion & Edmund Pevensie
Where/When: City of Ariel (Pre-Reboot), A Fussy "Prudish" Tearoom on a Chilly Late Afternoon
Warnings: Foodporn, Footsie, All that underaged sex good stuff that comes from a heavily aphro'd game context.


The end of Zexion's nose was still a fierce shade of pink by the time he finally shed his outer layers and unwound his scarf, and it still felt colder than the rest of his face, prompting the habitual rubbing between service as the tea parlous maids bustled about, shooting disapproving looks and tutting and gaping in wide-eyed disapproval at couples fondling each other beneath the twee tables as if that were actually a scandalous offense.

It was all tongue-in-cheek play, of course, and that in itself was marvelous people-watching entertainment, if not for the spoils of his own present company. Upon Edmund's arrival, he held up his own shrunken cup from its saucer with sly guilt playing at the corners of his mouth, along with a rich brown smear that he licked away with far less sublety than was proper, shrugging.

"I know, I know, skipping tea for drinking chocolate's a right punishable offense by your sensibilities,"  He surrendered, easing his shoulderblades back against the parlour chair and setting his cup back down. "But alas, it tempted me, I simply couldn't help myself."

The array of sweets seemed unfairly delectable today too, three tiers of crispy, fudgey and chewy, ganache truffles oozing caramel and delicately half-dipped rolled wafers, rich two-bite black forest cakes and other attractive morsels rolled in crushed nuts and candied peel.

Comments

[just_edmund]

"I'd take anybody with half as much observational fortitude as you as a potential threat," Edmund clarifies with a wry look in return, "but if it tickles your fancy to consider yourself an ominous figure, I won't be churlish enough to deny you the pleasure."

Of course, Ienzo has to go and follow it up with something that could indeed be taken as a threat in a certain light. A threat, or a warning, or a friendly caution between schoolmates. Edmund's brows flatten, and his face grows guarded. "Your circle was rumoured to dabble in worse, and yet here you are, innocently speculating on Plato like a good boy," he half-sneers. "Going to turn snitch as well as prig?"

Nobody quite knew what Ienzo's game was anymore. Edmund couldn't give two figs about schoolyard status, and a part of him fancied the thought of an unincorporated scholar to parry wits with as a chum, but there were darker things murmured about that cliquish set than mere exclusivism, eruditry, and pederasty. Just what was Ienzo's part in all of that?

"I've heard things," he agrees, pulling his satchel of books close and taking some of the weight off his shoulder. "Which is far more reason to ask you directly than not. If I believed all I heard in this coll, I'd be the most gullible first year to ever walk these halls. But these unorthodox circumstances...they'd be worth the listen. The bracing mug would merely be to warm up from the bitter walk to the pub."

He eyes Ienzo speculatively. "Running away already? Aren't you worried some poncy senior will get his mitts on you mid-flight?"

[illicitresearch]

Ominous? If only the chilly severity in his eyes could hold people at a distance with any consistency. Ienzo glancees off and mutters something under his breath, a fleeting thought which sounds an awful lot like Gargoyles in the Gurney.

It would make a fine club, for bookish boys with nowhere else to belong, lurking like corvids on a fence.

Snitch was a particularly nasty insult, for a boy who had seen what he'd seen and had never gone wagging his tongue about it. He knew too much about the methodical torments that happened in the basements of his former house, and the fellowship who dared to called it research beyond all pretenses of establishing their pecking order. It wasn't the rules of the game that interested them, because every boy who'd ever been through school knew them, but the science of it, the theory that interested his collegues. Despair could be measured, catalogued, extracted, turned to potent substance in the soul of a broken person. Ienzo knew it had been well-documented, much of it by his very own hand. Those papers had vanished in a locked valet case, along with his friend and master's other polished writings, off to serve some grander purpose in the great scheme of the world.

He heard whispers that his old building had been emptied for an "airing out" over the summer, before term. Wondered what the walls would say if they could speak, if whitewashing over them had ensured their silence.

"Oh, you can read whatever materials you fancy, Pevensie, I don't care a whit about that." Ienzo chuckles flippantly, reaching out to pat the shoulder strap as if to wave off the matter of the satchel's contents entirely.

"But," His fingers closed and tightened around the leather strap, and he pulled firmly enough to reel Edmund in closer, his voice dropping deeper as he lurched up onto tiptoes. Ienzo cut far from an intimidating stature from a distance, but up close there was a certain dangerous intensity in his eyes that made blood between your ears seem thunderous. "If you give that sanctimonous arse and his cassocked cronies reason to have anything on these shelves pitched to the furnace..." God help the upstart moron who gave the chapel any fuel to host a bookburning by quoting Zarathustra like a proud, phenomenally boorish born again atheist on the lawn. "Forget snitching. I'll end you."

Big, hot words, for such a bantam Bint, but at least it's a nobleminded ultimatum.

Ienzo relinquished his hold and took a step back, rattling out a too-tense breath and looking Edmund up and down with a bewildered, owlish sort of incredulity, as if he already regretted getting too confrontational. He let breathing room ease out between them for a moment, uncertain, biting at the insides of his mouth as Edmund casually accused him of dodging the fag-masters. Ienzo rolled his eyes. Weren't they all?

"You're awfully keen on barreling down the hill for a pint today, aren't you?" He clucked back, lofty with reproach. "Nothing's very private about a public house. But I'm certainly not about to entertain a tell-all with you right here, either."

So they were headed off to elsewhere, unless Edmund had any further objections.

[just_edmund]

Lulled by the curiously good-natured shrugging off of his taunt, Edmund blinks and doesn't retreat from the friendly pat. Which makes the sudden tug and even suddener presence of Ienzo getting up in his face to threaten him against book-burnings...

Unexpectedly and inconveniently erotic.

Shite, he sighs wearily to himself, as the automatic pumping of adrenaline courses blood even faster throughout his body. Experiencing the indignities of adolescence for a second time is a fate he'd done little to deserve. It wasn't fair that a simple manhandling by this self-appointed bibliosoph would make his pulse pound in his ears and his spine stiffen and his eyes lock into the dark swirl that pooled in the fierce gaze before him. But so it was.

He was too startled (and discomfited) to make any sort of reply in the moment, and Ienzo had released him and looked for all the world like he had no idea why Edmund was staring at him dumbfounded, by the time he'd collected himself enough to respond. "I'll keep that in mind." Was that sarcasm on his tongue? Hard to say for sure.

"It's been a while," he says, a little testily, still hyperaware of another type of indulgence that he'd done without for too long. "I wouldn't say no to it. But if you have a better place where we won't be at the mercy of the nearest self-congratulatory tosser, lead on."

[illicitresearch]

He's left Edmund blotchy in the face by getting up in his space, and Ienzo can see the way his chest rises and falls, which wasn't really what he'd intended. Aeleus, in a too-late effort and nudging him towards something resembling ethics, had made him swear off bullying unless it was in the defense of someone weaker... obviously no one else here to stand up for, but himself and the legacy of his family's heirlooms.

That, perhaps, was the story worth sharing the vigorous indignities of, as a test to see if this boy could be trusted.

His expression softens to something a wee bit apologetic, until Edmund's brittle reply leaves him arching a brow. Bit young, for a drunkard. Then again, Ienzo's a been a bit young for a lot of things, and there's nothing he hates more than snaring himself in hypocrisies.

"Awhile since what?" There's a hint of guardedness there, too- if Edmund has any inkling of the sorts of arrangements a cadamite is familiar with, he's certainly not entitled to a taste of it, on the relatively equal footing that they are.

But he tames back that urge to build a wall where he has no foothoolds, shoulders dropping.

"I might know of a certain cupboard." He offers, voice low. Braig made a ferreting thief of him early on, and his Senior's set of lockpicks was one of their parting gifts. "Professor Wilkes is off to visit his mam for the weekend, and he keeps a stash of her homemade shrubs there, if you really must tipple off the cold."

[just_edmund]

"Since I've nipped down to the village," was the cagey reply, a faint grin gracing Edmund's face. Confessions of prior lifetimes of benders with wine-gods were best left for another time. He would have been vaguely flattered and appalled all in the same breath to know the reason for that guardedness. As if he was the Blood type. He certainly wasn't fishing for any sort of Tart of his own, not even a taste.

And then - the conciliatory gesture, more than conciliatory, really; positively convivial. "Damn good of you, Buckwald," Edmund says approvingly, his eyes beginning to light up as the adventure of it all took shape in his mind. "Won't that be a lark? How do you propose we do it? It's the place itself that's the real appeal, you know. There's nowhere in this bloody dungeon to call your own."

The change in his mood at the prospect of some fun was remarkable. This was far better than his original idea. He shoulders his satchel more evenly across his torso and hip, so that he can comfortably lean close to hear the rest of the murmured plan. Any whisper of this and there'd be hell to pay. Nothing like a little lockpicking and larceny to bring a couple of fellows together as co-conspirators.

[illicitresearch]

"Well aren't you the dipsomanic fox!" Ienzo blurts with a dry explosion in his mouth that follows, and it's hard to tell if he's impressed that Edmund's dodged his way off campus without anyone noticing, has gotten himself served as a first year, or if he thinks the bravado's a steaming load of bunk. He shakes his head and shares the grinning for a moment, crooked bangs swaying.

"Oh, we'll just set ourselves to some tidying chores near his study and if anyone's around to question it, we tell them one of his favorites sent us." He shrugs cooly, pleased to know the formula here, even if he's only been a part of Braig's escapades on a few select occasions. He's looking like a true mischief-maker here, and that's risky, but at least he knows the Who's Who of other houses and more importantly which Prefects are slavishly devoted to certain teachers. I

t's this insiders knowledge that sets him apart from most of the other new boys, an advantage that doesn't seem to realize the power of fully till he's smoothly finding himself with answers. Leaning in, he suggests the easiest alibi. "...Charlie Blackridge and his mates. They'll be at the Rugby match till dusk."

[just_edmund]

"Er..." Edmund looks nonplussed for a moment. Compared with the binges and excesses of the seniors and their privileged inner circles, his own tolerance for a glass of wine or mug of ale seemed positively harmless. If you called it harmless to bribe one of them into buying a round or two in exchange for an essay that not only would be passing marks but would be believable coming from the dunderhead in question. "Thanks? What can I say, it's a gift."

Ienzo seemed to be thoroughly enjoying laying up the plans. Edmund wonders to himself if this was his first chance at actually coming up with them himself rather than simply doing the bidding of his ringleader. At any rate, Ienzo had an especial knack for it so far, and Edmund found nothing to quibble with in the heist. In fact, the exactitude of his knowledge of a gang's whereabouts and timetables leaves a lasting impression on the younger Pevensie. He casts an admiring glance at the slight youth and his cunning precision, finding Ienzo closer than ever in their conspirings.

"Whew! And here I thought there was something special about you keeping an eye on me. Seems like you just keep an eye on everybody." He chuckles, shakes his head, and turns toward their dormitory so they can drop off their things and make preparations for burglary. "I'm afraid my lockpicking skills are a little rusty, but I'll gladly keep a lookout if you are able to do the dirty deed yourself. Hmm...a pair of gloves in case old Wilkes turns amateur sleuth and decides to dust down his things?"

[illicitresearch]

There's a lightness in his gait, a newfound sense of purpose, and having earnest company's undoubedly the cause. It brings them quickly across the lawn before they can be otherwise waylaid, lady luck on their side. Edmund keeps on conspiring close by his side, and it's actually a welcome thing, not to hold his chin high or be craned down at, in order to stay a part of the conversation.

"Any old handkercheif'll do, my dear Watson." He quips back, rolling his eyes at the thought of the absent-minded professor with his thick glasses and big whiskers puffing on a pipe and pulling out a powder brush. "...Besides, it's just a little nip we're pinching, I hope you're not planning to drink the poor sod dry- He still has essays to grade, and his mother's not well!"

Edmund seems happy to leave most of the incriminating business to him, though, and Ienzo isn't quite sure of him yet to let him play light accomplice, particularly at the door. You never know how easily a fellow might crack under pressure and sell you out in a flash. He's seen it happen enough times.

"Brush the rust off and have at it, man, there's no need to waste an opportunity like Private Education!" Ienzo insists, giving him a sound clap on the shoulder, as if letting him get on his knees in front of the understairs cabinet and fumble with the lockpicks a little is a magnanimous gesture of a learning experience. "Don't worry, I'll have your back."

[just_edmund]

It seemed most were enjoying the fine day rather than being cooped up in the stuffy halls, which was a stroke of luck for their purposes, no need to trot out the excuses yet. Edmund still keeps a lookout as they make the climb and emerge down the sought-upon hallway, just in case there were any observers as keen-eyed as Ienzo marking their movements.

"That wouldn't be very sporting of me, now would it? I'm not that much of a tosspot! Just a tipple or two, enough to prove we could." The point wasn't the drink really; it was the adventure of it all, and a new chum to pull it off with.

Speaking of which...

He's not deceived by the cheeriness and magnanimity. Edmund peers over his shoulder with a decided glower that's intent to skewer his blustery partner in crime for shoving off the dirty work onto him while clearly distrusting him to keep proper lookout - or keep his word. "And how do I know you're being straight with me?" he demands, brandishing a pin and handkerchief from his pocket like they were his makeshift sword and shield rather than the tools of the amateur lockpicking trade. "Using me to break in to get more than cordial - Wilkes has been known to take part in certain Societies, hasn't he? - I wouldn't put it past your set to want access to their notes."

His gaze might not have quite the piercing severity of Ienzo's, but it had the uprightness of truth and the justice of honour (among thieves though it may be) to give an extra force to his inquiries.

[illicitresearch]

Even as Edmund rounds on him, Ienzo seems more interested in the loose tidbit contained in the accusation than Edmund's distrust itself. "Societies?" He's either playing ignorant awfully well, or the rumors really haven't reached his ears. "I hadn't heard."

"But that's interesting..." he frowns, cocking his head and rubbing a forefinger under his lips "What sort of notes could you be referring to?"

"As for my set?" There's a distinct clip to his voice, sharpening for a moment, before he seems to slowly deflate in abandoned defeat, glancing aside. "They're gone." Ienzo says hollowly, so somber that his graduated clique may as well be mistaken for six feet under. "It's just me now."

"That's why they had me change houses." He says suddenly, eyes locked back on Edmund's, speaking more frankly and caustically now on the subject than he has in front of anyone else. "So I could have an appreiation for the whole genuine first-year fagging experience, fair and squarely, at the proper age to be an abused little boy." His lips pull back in a slight sneer, derisive of the system that everyone hates, but evetually accepts. "(But you knew that already, didn't you? Doesn't everyone?)"

Scowling, Ienzo seems to shrug off the subject with a dismissing shake of his head.

"And what of it, if we stole a peek at the old man's papers while we're at it? I wouldn't turn and snitch on you. No point in making enemies among the few sharp ones here. I've no interest in making an archrival of you, Pevensie, no matter how much the Latin professor pits my pronuncion up against yours."

[just_edmund]

Edmund isn't sure either which Ienzo is playing, the loner out of the gossip loop or the cunning schemer angling for more juicy details. Either way, it seems he's hit upon some small piece of interesting trivia that gives him the tiniest bargaining chip. He'll take it.

"Oh, it isn't the sort of thing I'd discuss in hallways," he says wickedly, a shrug of his shoulders in a obliquely casual way. "I'm sure you understand," and there's a knowing twist to his mouth as he looks hard at Zexion, trying to tell the act from the truth in the sudden deflation of grandeur into desolation. There's lots of things you lot wouldn't discuss in hallways, isn't there?

He looks almost pityingly at his painfully raw companion. "I knew that when I was nine year old. You must be new to the educational experience here, eh? Or did your cronies always protect you from that sort of thing, even when you were young?"

Even if Ienzo wants to shake it all off as nothing, Edmund is not one to blindly trust these days. What was at first a harmless schoolboy lark seemed a bit more momentous now. Not that he was about to call it off. Just to tread cautiously as they went. Edmund twists the pin into an L-shaped bracket. "A peek...perhaps. But it would be mere curiosity on my part. For you? Surely you can't be entirely oblivious to your reputation here. If I knew what was good for me, I would probably leave you well enough alone. Fortunately, or unfortunately..."

He bends before the professor's door, and slides his makeshift lockpick in, resigned to settle in for a long few minutes of rattling. Too bad Ienzo hasn't shared his magical set with him...

"I'm not the leaving-well-enough-alone kind."

[illicitresearch]

"I see." Ienzo says drolly, with infinite patience and resigned inscrutability at Edmund's snide insinuations, tucking hands within his pockets and peering round corners while they amble along just be certain no one else is headed in the same direction.

"I was still studying under Lord Ansem's tutelage, when I was nine." He responded. A more privledged little swot than the actual bloods, to be taught directly by a noblity who was considered one of the very well-read trustees. "Until I took the entrance interviews? So... yes. I suppose I was protected in a way. But then you'd never suffered Braig yourself, so... I'd say you're fairly lucky."

Lord Ansem Jr.'s lean-faced enforcer.

Ienzo went sour-faced at mention of his 'reputation', and glanced away in dark-eyed dismisal. "Whatver you think you're implying about me, I suggest that you consider leaving it well enough alone?" He answered finally, after a long quiet of prodding and rattling.

He was still itching with curiousity now, as to what untold society mysteries Wilkes's nots held. Was that something Edmund had just made up on the spot, to leave him wondering what things he didn't know? They weren't nearly close enough mates that he could casually call the other boy's bluff.

"...Will you tell me when we're out of the hallway?" He mutters, shifting his weight foot to foot a little with impatience.

[just_edmund]

Ah yes. One of the privileged few to enjoy a truly private education until the necessary evil of the communal system became inevitable. Edmund couldn't deny his envy at the luxury of it, but he dearly wanted to give the impression that it really didn't mean all that much to him. "Your suffering must have been great indeed," he replies dryly. "To only have to bear a few years of fagging, and a fearsome Braig before that. I count myself lucky indeed."

His sardonic tongue seems irrepressible, even when his arrows find their marks. "I shall...consider it," Edmund promises, tongue between his teeth, focus turning to the precise fit of the pin against each click of the lock. The first one is always easy. The second makes him heave a furtive sigh. Yes, this is always the maddening part. "But I would hardly be a very worthy archrival if I wasn't curious at all about you and your doings."

"Tell you?" He's genuinely confused by the question for a moment. He jiggles at the second key-pin. It creaks stubbornly at him. Budge, damn it. "Oh, about the notes and things? Perhaps I shall. If you give me a good reason to assure me that - how did you put it? - you won't turn and snitch on me. Or turn and snitch whatever you find to those old friends of yours. Gone though they might be."

He's reasonably sure Ienzo still has a way to get in touch with them if he really needed to.

The second gives way, almost grudgingly, and the third groans as he pokes at it. His fingers used to be more adept at this business. He makes an irritated noise at it, as if that will convince the rusty old lock to give up any of its gates. And Ienzo is probably just sitting back, laughing at him. "This was supposed to be a revision for lockpicking, wasn't it? The glories of Private Education in the modern young man's development? A great help, you are!"

[illicitresearch]

"You've had a brother to look out for you, haven't you?" Ienzo protests, folding his arms. His pout is the kind of petulance that usually gets wipe off after the first few months of jeering, except Ienzo's turned it into the sort of full mouthed, surly, bow-lipped thing that all jaded tarts wear after they become immune to being called spoiled crybabies.

Edmund's taking his sweet time with the lock, which probably would be over and done with now if he weren't flapping his mouth.

"I just told you I didn't want an archrival!" The boy hisses hotly, annoyed above all that he'd only been half-listened to. That, or he could only handle sarcasm from certain sources, and Pevensie wasn't one of those trusted wellsprings yet.

A bit tricky to snitch to someone who's made themselves scarce he thinks despairingly, and lapses into a stony quiet while Edmund continues to struggle with the pin. At this rate there won't be any warning nip for them at all, and they'll both return to the dormitories feeling like fools, and Ienzo won't feel particularly guilty about it for setting him to the task, either. It's not his fault Ed's a lousy thief.

"What help would you have me be?" He tsks eventually, looking more bored and restless than ready to burst into laughter. "Can't do it? Want me to run and get my kit?"

[just_edmund]

"We weren't always in the same school," Edmund points out, huffing in between jiggles. He's not trying to delay this - why would he? - he's the one who would get caught red-handed, if any of this goes south. He's just - well - it's been a long time! He does need practice, and it's embarrassing but there it is. He's not born good at everything. He's not Peter. "That's where the problem started, in fact. Whenever he wasn't there to look after me...well, you see how well it's worked out without him here."

Not disastrously, but there's no glory to be had for a lad who doesn't put up a good fight now that his bellicose brother is not there to jump into a brawl, no choice but to follow him into it.

"I know." It's half-chuckled, hearing the heat of frustration in the protest. "You will have to give us a better title, once the day is done."

The silence helps, and he attacks the fourth key-pin at last with a sigh of relief. He can make this work. "I can do it, if you just shut up and let me be for a moment. Here...it's just...ergh go in, damnit all...there!"

With a flourish of pride that gives way to a flush of self-consciousness, he picks the final lock and it springs open with a groaning sag. He pushes the door open. "Lecture unnecessary, Mr. Buckwald. But if there's a lock on the cabinet...you're the one to have at it. Fair's fair."

[illicitresearch]

A better title than archrivals, hm. Ienzo stares out dreamily past the window at the end of the hall, watching over the various sporting clubs at practice, and recalls very late night whispers exchanged where he and his senior mates were all given better monikers. Schemer, he was called then, and this was really quite the juvenile scheme by comparison.

But there was another boy here with him now, for better or worse. The drink might make him merry, if not cleverer with pins.

At last the lock was sprung, and there was really no time for celebrations till they'd slipped inside. Throwing one last glance down the hall, he waited till Edmund had stepped inside, giving the doorknob an extra polishing with his own hanky, then followed after with delicate care in shutting the door behind them.

The history lecturer's office was eccentric, full of decorative odds and ends, cultural artefacts, ships in bottles, piles upon piles of unsorted books. Wilkes wasn't particularly tidy in his habits, and a bit of a doddering pack rat which made him rather easy to filch from, once you could get past the door. Ienzo pulled the shade down at the window, tugged the green-shaded library lamp on at his desk, and let his eyes do a quick pass over the room to see what had changed since the last time he'd been in here. He brought the chair over and stepped around to a certain relic of a powdered wig up on a high bookshelf, perched crookedly on a marble bust.

He extracted a much better shifty pick and wrench from its depths with a grin, hopping down with a sly wink at Edmund, and then crossed to the cupboard, which was no more or less antique than anything else in the office.

"You were saying then, about Wilkes and his societies?" He prompted helpfully, settling crosslegged on the floor as he set to work on the tarnished keyhole. He screwed up his tongue in the corner of his mouth- like the 'uncle' who'd shown him had always done, let his eyes slide far left, and listened- a stupid trick, really, a conman's theatrics, but having ritual always helps. In a moment there's a click, and the cabinet swings open.

"Ah, there's not much left..." Ienzo shoulders sag in disappointment, just long enough to get Edmund peering over his shoulder in worry, so that he can laugh like a tenor bell and then dutifully pass two near-full glass bottles off.

[just_edmund]

Edmund watches him with a mixture of curiosity and mild suspicion, having looked his fill around the room and finding it very much as he'd expect Wilkes's office to look. Of far more pedagogical interest was the sure way Ienzo fetches his tools of the trade from the most unpromising of places. His eyes widen a little when he catches the wink. "You've done this before," he says, rather unnecessarily, but the obvious was too intriguing not to point out. "How...quaint."

So much for Ienzo using him to get into the office. He's surprised those notes haven't already been thoroughly ransacked to the point of making any information that could possibly pumped from him completely obsolete.

Well, in for a penny...

"I suppose there's nothing you couldn't unearth from someone willing to loosen his lips - it's all rumours, you know, but ones that everybody seems to know - so if there's any truth to be found, it will be in this room." Edmund is rather reassuring himself that he's not doing any harm in talking to Ienzo about the matter - no more harm than anyone else less circumspect might do. But first things first.

"Already been hitting it up? Thought you wanted to leave the old boy some grog to souse his worries away." He does peer a bit glumly around to get a view of the situation, before the laughter wafts over him and he grins. "Point, Buckwald." He isn't too buttoned up to laugh at himself when he takes things too seriously sometimes. "A prank within a prank. Cleverly done."

He accepts one of the proffered bottles with a gracious nod of the head. "Now, shall we each tipple off one, to even things out?" The bottle unstoppered, he sniffs appraisingly at it. "I rather wonder, that you hadn't heard a whiff already of our esteemed host's Freemasonery. But there are whispers of darker ones than that, even."

[illicitresearch]

"Not since last spring term." He admits bashfully with a wag of his head, a smile crossing his usually-severe face, which seems both boyish and a bit forlorn. Quaint? Was it? "(Not on my own.)" Ienzo added, fidgeting with the wig pin fashioned into a sturdier pick. "I'd hoped he'd hadn't moved around too much?"

"If there's any truth to be found, we could be here all evening." Because there's certainly quite a bit stacked up all about here for hard evidence to get utterly lost in the shuffle. Idly, he wonders if old Wilkes had kept any of his comrades' final essays in one of the filing cabinets.

Edmund let himself be pranked with a lot less entertainingly furious reactions as Even often had. But it was good to know his ease with it, not that he'd ever taken his new schoolmate for entirely humorless?

He unstoppers the second bottle with a fierce blink and flaring of his nostrils- the burn of alcohol wasn't something he'd ever quite learned to enjoy, and Wilkes' homebrew was stronger stuff by far than tavern ale or hard cider, deceptively sweet with a searing, medicinal burn down the throat. Braig used to take it straight, from a flask, and came here to replenish it often enough that Wilkes had to have known about the casual theft, somehow? Yet he'd never changed the hiding spot, or let it run dry. Ienzo had only ever sipped on it diluted before, tipped helpfully into his tea when his nerves were run down and seasonal sniffles threatened to leave him bedridden.

Not yet so convivial as to rally up a toast, or clink their bottles in cheers, he's the first to set his lips to the shrub and try a swallow, his mouth is full and his nostrils on fire by the time that Edmund's mentioning rumors of Illuminati, and because he has something on the tip of his tongue to say he hurries it, gulping and then doubling forward with a hand clapped over his mouth, muffling a ragged coughing fit.

So much for seeming shrewd and impressive, worldly wise.

With watering eyes ad warming cheeks, Ienzo's lungs finally manage to accept that the swallow had indeed gone down the right pipe after all.

"Oh, well certainly he has all the strange odds and ends, curio obsessions, that might lead one to believe he might belong to some fraternal order," he croaks, leaning forward to intimate in a wilder-eyed whisper. "(he's even got a weird ivory phallus around here somewhere- I've seen it, a big well-polished thing with bollocks attached! Dilan thinks he nicked it from a tribe in equatorial Africa.)" Sitting back, Ienzo leans his shoulder against the cabinet door. "The way you brought it up, it sounded like someone found convincing proof.in his paperwork."

He squints after a moment, tongue till swirling round his mouth to contemplate the flavor left in his mouth- despite its strength, the aftertaste was delightful, a little bit candied and herbal. "...but the professor doesn't exactly seem the type to fraternize much, does he?"

[just_edmund]

Settling in a heap beside the other boy, Edmund eyes him curiously, both for that smile and the way he seemed rather homesick for his old set. It was a different side of him than he'd seen before. He decides he liked the effect of the smile on Ienzo's face. "We might have to shake off the dust a bit, true. But Cerberus won't be back for a while, eh?"

He's just as curious at the way his compatriot sniffs with much more acumen than he does, apparently sensitive to even the smell of it. The taste, then...he halts for a moment to simply watch in amusement as Ienzo nearly chokes on the stuff. And then, why, he can't help it; he bursts into laughter, his own features more boyish and like his own age in the lightness of his broad grin. "Careful there," he says good-naturedly, slapping Ienzo on the back. "Best try the esophagus instead. Better than the old windpipe."

He raises his own phial and tastes a small bit before deciding that it's considerably easier going down than the Dwarfs' summer ales, and takes a nice-sized quaff to wash the first gulp down with. No sting or splutter here. (Was he about to live up to Ienzo's first impressions of him as a confirmed dipso?)

"Indeed, I've been longing to take a peek into those cabinets..." Companionably, Edmund leans forward when Ienzo does. The third sip does get a little dicey as weird ivory phalluses come into play, but he manages it manfully and swallows with no more than a slight cough. "Is that so? How...un-Victorian of him."

That he didn't have any more proof seemed a disappointment. He shrugs and tries to look arch. "Perhaps we'll be the first to bring the damning evidence to light. I hinted at mere rumours, you will recall." He presses his tongue to his bottom lip, catching the drops there. He should really try to savour this. "Hmm, and what exactly do you mean by fraternize?" His other brow joins its mate in consideration of the apparently well-fraternized youth tippling next to him.

[illicitresearch]

"We have time to spare." Ienzo agrees, rather relaxed now that they're here behind closed doors, with the shade drawn and the desk lamp casting low, greenish light about the office. It feels like the world's grown more intimate and more nostalgic, here on the floor in front of Wilkes' cabinet.

Even the convival slap on the back reminds him of his older friends, picking on him just a little, ruffling his hair or shoving him about (but never too much- a look from Aeleus or a sharper, silencing word from Lord Ansem's first adopted son kept him safe from rough handling). The sound of laughter ringing across the ground and in the halls was something he'd been feeling contemptuous out this term, but when Edmund sniggers at his misfortunate gulp, there's friendliness to it that makes him smile back shyly, wiping his mouth on the sleeve of his blazer.

"I told you, it's miles more efficient than what they'll let college boys toss back in the pub." He coughed, wishing he had a glass of water to gulp down and ease the warmth pooling in his belly, absorbing swiftly. It used to take only a few minutes to feel lightheaded and skin-fuzzed, when they let him try a toddy. Surely a few seasons hasn't improved his tolerance that much. But Pevensie's already blown ahead of him into a third swallow, and so he feels obliged to keep pace.

"The Ancients had all kinds of funny stuff like that?" The boy declares loftily, shrugging up one shoulder, trying to play casual. "I mean, look at the Classics, even, and they're none so prudish about it? Look at the things they painted on urns! It was downright respectable to have... dionyesian revels, erastes, things like that." He babbles quickly, not breaching the subject delicately so much as dashing across it as if it were a bed of hot coals- maybe even with a little too much enthusiasm, given his nervous awareness of rumors and suspicions.

Ienzo cleared his throat again, and set the bottle down between his folded legs.

"You know, ah... get on with his colleagues?" He waved his hand in indication of the office and its haphazard clutter- Professor Wilkes was a bit of an old oddball, even to the rest of faculty. "Can you imagine him in a secret society? I mean, I guess if they're also all magpie lunatics, the freemasons, but aren't they supposed to be the ones really puppeteering the whole world from the shadows?"

"Wilkes doesn't seem like that. Not unless all of this is a really swell front."

[just_edmund]

"Not to mention, rather lighter on the wallet." This was...surprisingly nice. Not just the free liquor, but the combination of company and harmless lark. It had been quite a while since he'd done anything like this, just for the fun of it. Something inside him begins to ease, infinitesimally. Edmund finds a more comfortable spot for his shoulders against the side edge of the cabinet, his grin both knowing and kindly at his lightweight new chum.

His amusement only grew as Ienzo lectured him on the lasciviousness of the Ancients and Classics. He could barely hold back the quirk of lips as he replies flippantly. "Why certainly...we all know what the Satyrs and Fauns were really up to. When the gods themselves lead the revels and rivers of wine, why, what can we mere mortals do but follow in their prancing footsteps? Not just respectful, but worshipful."

His gaze settles with some curiosity on his hot-and-cold companion, full of fire one moment about erastes and the grand Hellenestic phallic tradition, and primly sedate the next. Just what did happen behind the doors of that mysterious black-coated set? And just where did Ienzo's place fall in the ranks of so many older, worldly fellows?

"Certainly, he doesn't strike me as the urbane harbinger of history," and Edmund takes another contemplative sip, rolling the sweet-strong liquid around in his mouth a second or two. He waves his hand. "But then, is anybody, really? We are all puppets, to some degree or other. No man's destiny is truly his own." He offers a careless grin at his own philosophical waxing and leans in with a little shake of chin. "You must promise not to turn me in for a Calvinist. Add it to the list of dangerous thoughts I indulge in."

Casually, he brushes up against Ienzo's shoulder and doesn't pull away. "In truth, there were some who thought your friends might be more of that sort than Wilkes. The Illuminati was a popular theory...but I thought it just as likely that the bunch of you might have invented a secret society all your own." His glances at Ienzo are only peripheral now. "Speaking of swell fronts. Some of them were rather old to be in sixth form, weren't they?"

[illicitresearch]

"If I were pissing my patron's money away down at the pub," Ienzo reasons, with a practiced talent for breezy persuasion, "I think he might be a little more upset with me than he would if he knew I'd taken a dram of friendly mischief on school grounds... and in the safety of our esteemed professor's offices!" He sneered in mock-jovially, lifting his bottle to the health of old Wilkes and his mam, "Surrounded by carefully curated artifacts to contemplate with our well-lubricated minds."

See? He was quite prepared to justify their thievery as innocently as possible, if landed themselves in a little trouble. Ansem knew he was lonesome this term, would pity them and pardon any serious probations, even if letters found their way home.

They'd gotten away with murder, engaging the doddering old lord's soft side for educating bright boys of terrible misfortune. Ienzo was more than comfortable, taking advantage of that by now.

He listened to Edmund speak of revels and rivers, smirking because the fellow really did sound like a praticed lush. "You worship often, eh?" Ienzo grins, imitating his swirling sip with puckered lips and a rolling tougue. It probably looked a little lewd.

Then he sniggered, and forced another swallow instead of sputtering at hearing Edmund confess to Calvanist doctrines.

"Dangerous thoughts?" He purred, lolling his head rather close to their touching shoulders and watching him through upturned eyes and oddly feathery lashes, coy at all the insinuation. "Aw, I'm sure they're mostly harmless? You only sound like you've entertained one too many gossipy tart's conspiracy theories, Pevensie."

His face falls into it's regular sullen pout, as he contemplates light and liquid through the bottle, and how much he'll need to claw his way through this particular subject.

"What's it worth to you?" Ienzo asks, heavy lidded, slumping himself a little against Edmund's shoulder with a lean of his head that's not unlike a nuzzle "I'm rather young, I'm told? So if you're asking me, a scholar's ready to start or quit studies whenever he's ready." His voice has gone lofty, lilted, toying around in the upper part of his register that he hasn't quite grown out of completely. "The others had endowed research to finish, and Lord Ansem invited us to study here under his scholarship for as long as we wished. It's a very nasty time to be out in the world, you understand?"

[just_edmund]

"Your patron?" Edmund lifts his eyebrows in a highly interested tilt. This was the first he'd ever heard of it, for Ienzo, but then he hadn't heard him talk of parents, either. "He must be a most liberal and forward-thinking one, to sanction this adventure. Certainly I'd like for none of this to reach my mum's ears...or Peter's." He grinned conspiratorially. "They wouldn't take so progressive a view of it as your patron."

It was good to know that at least one of them had an advocate should they get into hot water, but he'd be more comfortable knowing Ienzo's benefactor was, ahem, someone with some sway, enough to get the both of them out of expulsion.

"Mm, not often, not anymore." He contemplates the provocative swirl of Ienzo's lips and tongue with a pensive air. Wine was not the only pleasure he abstained from these days. "I was perhaps meant for more Classical times, myself." A strand of soft hair tickles his neck, not his own barely contained curls but a curiously shagged, straight wisp. He cants both shoulder and arm against Ienzo's lolling weight, curiously pleased by the closeness of it. "Perhaps I have been too much taken in by the nothings of the gossip-mongers. But if there's smoke, it's best not to be caught in the fire yourself, eh?"

Was that...a whine he heard in Ienzo's voice? Edmund shakes his head, lets the rather young man lean against him with a steadiness himself that suggested he was only feeling the tip of his tipple thus far. "Certainly, nobody's asking you to stand trial for your fellow scholars' endeavors," he soothes, a hand falling to Ienzo's thigh and patting him gently. "I was only repeating what I'd heard. But you must have learned a great deal, hanging around them for those terms. Endowments are not easy to come by." Lord Ansem. Was that Ienzo's mysterious patron? He files the name away. There would be plenty of time to research later.

[illicitresearch]

"Forive me, that fell out so presumptuous-sounding," Ienzo swiftly amends, pricking a pin into his own ballooning hubris before Edmund can question his choice of words with too much scrutiny. "...but don't go spoiling the alliteration for us now. His lordship is my legal guardian, technically, until I've come of age." (Unless he's eventually adopted into the noble family, expected to inherit, like Ansem's other star-protege. But for the time being he remains the last Buckwald, an innocuously charming middle class name for a scholarship boy.)

Sometimes he wondered if the need for familial approval would have been any different, if he actually had family left. Ienzo only cared just enough about Ansem's opinion of him to do all the things necessary to remain in his good graces, but any love for the man who'd been his tutor was lost somewhere along with the awareness that other people thought him unfairly spoiled, and the realization that Ansem's other, older scholars flouted the independance of their inteligence and abused their privledges regularly. If Ienzo had any choice about being orphaned, he'd have gladly taken his parents back, sooner than coming into such Dickensian Great Expectations.

"They're always saying he's the one on the board of trustees with an optimistic eye on growing the college, both feet in the future, while the others cling stubbornly to traditions." Ienzo said anyway, proud to have a dreamer-doer of a benefactor that fancied himself a little wiser than the other rich old geezers that sat the board. "That sounds fairly progressive to me?"

Though his chosen successor thought miles and miles ahead of him, and Ienzo's real loyalty had been forged in ways meant for more Classical times, as well.

And although the memory of that enigmatic young man lingered under Ienzo's skin like a ghost, especially when he was cold and restless in the middle ofthe night, the companionable weight of Pevensie's body felt warm right now, and more comforting than anything he'd allowed himself in months. The shape of Edmund's hand felt new, but its bolder placement at Ienzo's thigh didn't make him tense or suddenly shy.

"I have learned more than I expect to, without them." He readily admits, sighing at how dull his lessons had become on their own. There was always diversion to be found in books, but no one around to be as rigorous in their dissection of them.

Ienzo nibbles at his inner lip, and wonders how he ought to address endowments and smoke and fire, satyrs and fauns, Edmund's curious nudgings around the mysteries of his extracirrcular activity. "You're just full of double entendre this evening." He eventually observes, eyes falling to the patting hand that's resting dangerously close to stroking zones that could prove troublesome for his trousers.

Then there's the thorniest rumor, of them all the one he hoped was only figure of speech, narrowing his eyes.

"Who said anything to you about standing trial?" he asks cautiously, in a lower and steely voice.

[just_edmund]

Edmund looks much less put-out by Ienzo's name-dropping of patrons and grants than curious, eager for any of the little personal tidbits that his new acquaintance has guarded so carefully until now. "How fortunate for you," he comments smoothly, nodding in sympathetic approval. "You must have been very glad to have procured such a generous and well-situated guardian. Such things can go awry so easily."

He's just dying to ask more, but doesn't want to shut down the fount of confession that the slightly inebriated Ienzo has become, and so instead he samples more from his own phial, hoping to encourage a camaraderie of continued effusive inebriation.

He wasn't sure at all what he was doing, putting his hand on Ienzo's thigh and even leaving it there when his companionable pat there was well completed, but it seemed churlish to pull back once he was in for a penny, and so Edmund goes in for the full pound. "You are a fine scholar in your own right," he comments, an absent path traced by his thumb along the course of a thigh. "You need not depend on their prowess to make a name for yourself?"

A contemplative hmph. "Am I?" His not-so-coy toyings had not fallen on deaf ears, it seemed. Edmund did not bother to blush for it. "Damn, and I was going for subtle there." His sly tone implies he's poking as much fun at himself as anyone. Oh, how fun it would be if Ienzo was in on the joke of all his pseudo-Grecian Narnian exploits! Perhaps someday, if his companion proves a very reliable sort...

But for now, it seemed their connection was still suspect to suspicion, from what Edmund was not certain at all. Nonplussed, he blinks at the suddenly on-guard boy beside him, who resembled nothing so much as a grey little cat with its hackles up. "Easy," he replies, much as he would have soothed a castle Puss so, a hand raised and extended (thumb and palm carefully wrapped around the glass), the other still rubbing a smooth path across one leg. "Nobody said anything, to me or anyone I've heard. You have no cause to worry about that."

Even as he reassured, his mind was spinning with new implications. Illegal activity not just overlooked but even sponsored by a trustee of the college? How...interesting. Edmund leans confidentially against Ienzo's side. "Even if something odd were to come out, I would hardly trust the information spread by the rest of them. You're clearly not responsible for any of their work. If you're even carrying any of it out anymore. That was the only thing I was worried about, coming here, you know?" He chances a peek between sips. "That was before I knew you came here on the regular, of course."