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]

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."

[illicitresearch]

"I know the other boys resent me for it, and I'll never be more than a nobody to most of them," Ienzo admitted sourly, prepared to be a disliked scholarship boy, but not for Edmund to point out how lucky he'd been, that his parents had made connections before they'd passed, that Lord Ansem knew about and fostered his early literacy. It was something of a touchy subject. "But I don't care, I'm here to get an education, not impress them."

Whether or not it mattered if he'd impressed Edmund was a a different matter, but the touch at his thigh was ticklish and warming as it neared the inner seam of his trousers, made his blood race and pool up embarrassingly in his lap. He squirmed a little, and hoped they'd both just ignore it for now.

"Nor to make a name for myself! Who said I was looking for renoun?" He flustered, just as much for being complimented for his smarts in the same breath that he'd been accused of trying to ride on coattails. "It's just that they introduced me to more exciting material than we'd ever cover at our level..."

Theoretical books in particular. He missed lying awake, fancying themselves sophists, muttering dialouges to each other till the dawning skies turned from dark to paler shades of blue.

"Subtle as a freight whistle." The boy tsked, shaking his head and setting his bottle aside, freeing up both arms to tuck them, crossed low, over his lap so the effects of Edmund's petting were a bit more well-hidden than his companion's words. "(But at least you don't coddle yourself under the desk in class, like Bertie Swarthmore.)" Ienzo noted viciously, the edge of a grin on his teeth. That had been the bigger scandal as of late, seeing the guest lecturer catch the poor bastard at it, then turn him loose to scrub his hands and report to the school chaplain, right in front of his peers.

"I told you, I haven't been in here since last spring!" He protested, convenienty glossing over any mention of carrying any kind of furthered research out. That would open a whole nest of troublesome questioning. "And it was Braig who took a nip often! I didn't carry out much beyond keeping watch for the groundsman."

And learning to lockpick, eventually.

[just_edmund]

What was possessing him? Making free with Ienzo's lap while they bandied about uncomfortable topics was hardly a deliberate plan; he so rarely dallied at all with fellow students that this was truly an anomaly, perhaps encouraged by the warmth of the cordial burning a kindly fire in the pit of his belly. Yes, he'd stick with that theory.

"Pooh, who gives two hoots about the other fellows? I certainly don't. I'd like to make a good enough impression on the profs to earn a few letters of recommendation, but renown in sixth form is hardly worth strutting about." Edmund waggled a heavy eyebrow in Ienzo's direction. "Exciting material, eh? I'm intrigued. Help a chap out and lend me something really juicy for a change."

He only half-smothered a knowing grin, spotting the modest but ineffectual attempts to hide the swell that would not have been so obvious if Ienzo hadn't drawn attention to it. "Heaven forbid," and Edmund adopted a shocked air of wide-eyed naivety. "I'm a well-bred Libertine. There are limits, after all. Self-abuse in rhetorics is well beyond my capacity to indulge, or stoop." A wandering hand on the floor of a well-stocked office, on the other hand, was just the right sort of stooping...

Might as well take another nip himself. He was outpacing Ienzo by now, but only half-feeling the effects so far. Still sharp enough to notice the neat omission of his curious prodding at the most relevant issue. No answer was going to be forthcoming about that, hmm? Telling. Edmund raised the other brow. "Oh, I assumed the majority of your group's research was carried out somewhere else than here. And I'm sure you were a very fine lookout for your drunkard friend. But you are far too comfortable a floor cushion to relinquish to watch duty now."

Half-draping against the slight but soft frame next to him, he wound a circuitous path up Ienzo's thigh to a hip, rounding its curve almost absently. "Tell me, what excites you now, what keeps you up at night with ideas too dangerous to breath in the company of your fellow students? Whisper them in my ear, I shan't tell." His head drooped confidentially against Zexion's, the soft curls tickling his neck where the collar of his shirt let pale skin peep through.

[illicitresearch]

Pevensie's advances, forward as they were, were making him positively miserable with melancholy. By the time the self-professed Libertine had a hand at his hip and a husky whisper in his ear, Ienzo was seriously considering resigning himself to the folly of having a confidante and a night-murmurer again, maybe, if this was really so much a bid for a go at his bedclothes as it seemed.

"Ah, he took all his best books with him, I'm afraid?" The sullen catamite frowned balefully, staring self-pityingly at his abandoned bottle for a long moment before reclaiming it for a deliberate, dramatic swig, as if having abruptly decided this will only come out in full if he's roaringly inebriated, and has just decided to go all in.

"I've been lonely for the lack of them." He announced, and drank deep. His cheeks pulled in puckered as he tipped the bottle back and gulped, sealing his lips over its mouth and finally plugging the hole with his tongue when it was time to tilt the bottle back down and swallow, having vacuum-sucked so much air before he'd detached himself that it made a resounding thunk of released pressure in the glass, when he did.

He coughed and blinked and hoped his erection would fold over and die in the time it took to become a less comfortable floor cushion.

"So you really must know, huh? Well, their research is concluded here." Ienzo insisted, with a tone of decided finality. "Most of it's been co-opted and classified, now, anyway, so I'm not supposed to talk about it with anyone."

That was the last he'd heard, at least, right around the time he'd made his clean break from the old hall. Swapping houses felt a little bit like going into some manner of witness protection. Aeleus was always clever with puzzles and ciphers, and his very last letter had been difficult.

"(I think they're working in the MI-13.)" He secreted, in the sort of wary whisper that spoke volumes for his own uncertainty. His schoolfellows had graduated, than seemingly up and vanished altogether.

"They entertained some... fairly radical ideas, on and off?" His tongue felt numb from the shrub, but that didn't stop him from talking in a flustered flurry once the snowball started racing rapidly downhill. Every mouthful a betrayal. "Emptying the self, emotional suppression, sometimes we spoke about connecting with parallel worlds and altering timelines, wilder things like that?" Ienzo flushed in the ears, almost embarassed to admit it. "A mix of psychology and pseudo-science."

He spoke like a man in his golden years fondly recounting his schooldays, not a child revisiting the adventures of last term. "Xeha was always reading his weird periodicals, two steps away from what some of them called batty mysticism behind his back," Ienzo bowed his head, realizing he'd let a dangerously intimate name slip, along with a truth that hid his infatuation by laughing their leader off as a mad occultist. "But Dilan reigned him in and Aeleus kept him grounded, and Even tried to wrangle all their hypothetical abstracts with... scientific procedure that wouldn't ever pass the ethics committee."

His chest heaved weakly with a sputter of nervous, pent-up laughter. He put down the bottle shakily and covered his face with his hand.

"Thats where most of the rumors come from." He groaned, rubbing over the sockets of his eyes and feeling the heavy warmth trickling through his limbs now. "They actually submitted a bunch of papers that raised eyebrows all around. (And those were the tame ones, that got published.)" The boy added flatly, before reeling himself back into weary composure and slumping into Edmund's side with a yawn.

"Anyway, traumatic memories and amnesia recovery is going to be an important field of study, for our generation."

A sobering thought, but one that really isn't going to help Ienzo now, sighing heartsick as he curls up broodily against his fellow scholar, gut burning in alarm for all the fermented apples that it's just been dowsed in.

"What keeps me up at night are all the questions we never got around to answering."

[just_edmund]

The sudden swing towards the melancholic and dour caught Edmund off-guard. He wondered belatedly if Ienzo was the morose sort of drunk. Maybe it was just the bent of their conversation that was pulling out the more glum feelings he'd apparently been storing up for a while.

"Of course - you lot were thick as thieves. I'd miss friends so dear too." It was hard not to feel for the lonely young scholar left behind by his much-admired, much-older companions. Edmund traced a hand more comforting than ribald around the lower curve of Ienzo's back, stroking there and nodding in sympathy as he heard him out, There was so much locked up in that buttoned-up, enigmatic youth, and it seemed apple cordial was one well-fitted key to his confidences.

He plied in soothing with thumb and three fingers splayed across the clothed bump of sacrum. "The things we don't know and can't explain are always the most fascinating. Little wonder that they intrigued your colleagues, however questionable the means they took in pursuit. I would like very much to read the published papers. The unpublished ones must be hard to come by." Quietly, he filed away the intriguing names for further investigation at a later time.

Such a heavy sigh, for one so young and studied. He looked wryly at Ienzo, burrowed into his side, and pressed his arm in rather kindly fashion around him, fingertips trickling over one jutting ilium. "You took me very literally. But you do toss and turn some nights, don't you? I've heard rustling from your bunk, terribly late, I suppose ruminating on all those unanswered questions and metaphysical dilemmas..."

For surely, none of those rustlings could have been anything more corporeal than the erudite ponderings of pseudo-scientific research?

Edmund hummed in musing himself. "Perhaps there are no answers easily achieved for the rest of them, but I've never thought mattresses that hard were conducive to meditation. In any case, you know what they say about two heads." More entendre? Perish the thought. He tucked his own bottle between his legs (where the companionable touches had begun to warm but not yet firm) and curled his other hand around the top of Ienzo's head against his shoulder. "You've borne all these thoughts by yourself for months. You needn't be entirely alone, you know."

[illicitresearch]

(Or just plain thieves, if their raiding of Wilkes' liquor cabinet is any indication.)

Edmund kept holding him, touching him, petting in ways that made him yearn in ways he hadn't bothered to over the past few monastic months of rote latin memorization, dourly and dilligently. The adolescent aches and pains that once had a suitor to rub out its misery nightly began to stir again under a wandering hand, his spine stretching and twisting, body wriggling closer to better accomodate a stroking hand beneath his blazer. Boys more concerned with their propriety would have something to say, about a hand that strayed near the top of their buttocks for too long.

Instead, Ienzo nestled in quite cozily beside him, drowsy-eyed. Edmund's lap was looking more and more inviting.

"My heart is sick." The boy said softly, the kind of self-diagnosis that was a little bit ashamed for letting himself become so attached, and to openly pine with such abandon after just a few swigs. There was no correcting himself now. No cure.

"And the bunks are like sleeping on rocks, in our hall." He grumbled, in a voice so flat and low that it croaked past his lips. "It's true, I'm not the only one who has trouble getting some shut eye?" If a witness to his insomnia is any indication.

He's less sure what to make of Edmund's continued insinuation, but '...better than one' tiredly echoes past his lips anyway, bowing his head against the consoling hand. Having his scalp rubbed had always comforted him.

"When I go home for Winter Holiday, I can bring back copies of the journals that printed them, if you're really that curious?" He offers. Strangely enough, as if to distance themselves from it, the school hadn't kept that publication shelved for student access. But Ansem certainly had it hardbacked in his study. That could be pinched easily enough.

"Thanks." Ienzo added, after a longer pause. "I really thought I'd lost myself completely, this term."

[just_edmund]

Something lonely and yearning stirred in Edmund in congruence. It was a feeling he was used to pushing down deep, for it served no purpose here where an intimacy with anyone was a dangerous, useless thing. But the pliant drape of Ienzo's body, the whispered confessions, needled at him that his own words might turn very well on himself. You needn't be entirely alone.

"Then be kind to it," he replied simply, a hand passing over Ienzo's slight chest. "As you would be to your body." Whether or not there was a cure for it wasn't the point. Whatever troubled this boy, it weighed heavy enough on him to keep him up at night. It wasn't fair for him to bear all the burden of those unanswered questions alone.

His flush betrayed him when insinuations were turned his way suddenly. Edmund looked away, pointedly. "They're just nightmares," he said, pushing down the rise of panic. He had no idea what he'd cried out in his sleep, that Ienzo might have heard. "A bad supper can do that to a fellow. Or a lumpy rock of a bed."

Hoping for distraction, he slid his fingers through the curiously silky spiked locks. Ienzo really didn't mind this touch, did he? "I wouldn't turn down that offer. If it isn't any bother." Till then, he would just have to angle for some oral recitation of those dangerous musings. If he could manage it without adding to Ienzo's case of heartsickness.

"Lost yourself?" Edmund pressed his lips together thoughtfully. The wriggling of back and thighs under his fingers was not the resistance of a frigid tarte nor a shy retreating virgin. There was another pause as he weighed his probable success and, finally, went with his gut. He laid the bottle to one side, out of the way, and reached for Ienzo. His hands took hold of gracefully flared hips and drew them, not inescapably, towards his lap.

"I don't mean anything by this," he murmured, soothing, almost apologetic. "I just thought you might...miss this. Maybe." He didn't have any real evidence, only suspicions, assumptions, and hunches to go off of. But the way Ienzo had spoken so adoringly of his older chums...

[illicitresearch]

It was a piece of advice kindly meant, but poorly recieved, especially as Edmund laid a hand over his heart. Ienzo's lungs emptied, dry, shuddering heave of a sound, and he bowed his head, shaking it, more than a bit ashamed of himself and his bitterness. How readily he was about to betray secrets to a boy he still barely knew. That he'd courted for a little camaradie on a passing whim. This was happening so quickly, so fast, his adolescent miseries bubbling up to the surface.

"I hardly sleep, barely eat..." Indeed, what was good supper from a bad one anymore, when you weren't hurrying it down and shoving extra breadrolls in your pockets and excusing yourself to join the upper years at their projects? What was real satiation, if not a picnic in Master Ansem's attic in the summer rain, feasting on a spread of biscuits, cheese, and apples nicked from the parlour fruit bowl, shaved so carefully to crisp slices with a pocket knife and pressed imploringly against his lips.

What was a good shower anymore, for that matter, under the dormitory's squeaky, lukewarm taps, when the fagging masters ducked in past the curtain, backed you against the tile and siezed your prick while laughing and called you a wasted little Tart, instead of sidling up against you smoothly from behind with a washcloth already lathered in french-milled lavender soap? There were reasons he sometimes let himself go filthy until the smell was almost noticeable, and rinsed out his bangs over the sink, fully clothed, spinning toward the doorway with the ends sopping and spraying outward whenever someone else ducked into the washroom.

"What makes you think I've been kind to my body?" Ienzo sneered, despite every movement right now, which seemed a self-indulgence for the sake of being touched. He thought nothing less of Edmund, for his nightmares, but hated when it meant he couldn't creep off somewhere else in the middle of the night, to pace out his insomnia down the halls after lights out.

But how could he resent a boy who pulled him gently in between his thighs without any malice meant by it, with something like tender sympathy, well-meaning, and probably misplaced? He found he couldn't lean up on Edmund's chest and feel wholly supported, nor give himself entirely to straddling a lap he was a little too well-matched in size for, to feel small and slight and cherished in.

His face reddened. He did miss this. He missed it too much to move away, but it smelled wrong, and it felt wrong, but the wrongness was all in the lack of their familiarity... not in the idea of having another boy hold him, itself. It made him feel knotted in the stomach, and traitorous.

"It's not the same." Ienzo said in a shrinking tone, curling his limbs toward the center of his body, and if to make himself physically smaller in Edmund's lap, equally apologetic. "You're not the same. I don't need a fraternity, I need... I miss-"

The evidence is in his trembling thighs and tangled tongue, having trouble with the inevitable confession.

"There's a very depraved sort of hunger in me, Edmund Pevensie." He finally whispers in exhasperation. "My body belongs to someone who's already left it behind, and I've neglected it to spite myself, for giving it away. Swear to me you won't breathe a word of this?" He looks back at Edmund with a one-eyed stare that begs to be permitted, despite pouring out the shameful truth. "The rumors are true- we were bedfellows here at school, he and I, and under our benefactor's roof. And I do miss it, I do. This place is hardly tolerable anymore."

[just_edmund]

For a moment, he was afraid Ienzo was going to be sick. No more cordial for him... And then he saw that the problem went farther than a few too many sips of fermented apples. Something was fundamentally, deeply wrong with him. Unhappiness was seeped into him like some wasting disease. Edmund wondered that he had covered it so well til then. Now that he saw it, it seemed strange to him that he hadn't noticed it before. Ienzo's efforts to hide had been effective.

Not this afternoon, though. The awkwardness was palpable, more than a little uncomfortable at the raw display of a malady he clearly had no part in. It was like - like seeing a family member naked, in pain; the mixture of wrongness and compassion twisted in his gut, and he had no outlet for it here. He frowned at the accusations, the hunching frame situated in his lap. He ran tongue and teeth over his bottom lip, waiting for the full confession of it all while tamping down on any retorts that might spring to the surface. His misguided attempts to console left him with a sour taste in his mouth. Of course he wasn't the same. He wasn't trying to be. He'd been offering the comfort of intimacy, and instead found a boy on withdrawals from the drug-like effect of his Blood.

He met the pleading stare head-on, and some of what he thought was written across his face. How did he, the one who rarely sought out the gossip and yet seemed to end up on the receiving end of it all too often, become the unwitting confidante for this boy's sordid affairs? If he'd given any credence at all to the rumours, it was to the idea that Ienzo might have been puppy-struck with certain ones of the older fellows in his group, might have offered certain liberties in exchange for their favour or protection or - or secrets from their research or what-have-you.

But the way Ienzo spoke of it, it was as if he belonged body and soul to his departed leader. Edmund tried to imagine being in love with that sort of person, someone who played fast and loose with the laws of humanity, ethics, and memory itself. It boggled him. "I swear," he said, without thinking, for he was never the type to go about spilling secrets. That was the easy part. Harder, much harder, was any sort of other reply to the bewildering succession of emotions Ienzo had lashed out with. Some of that struggle flashed across his features as well.

"You can't have what you think you need, while you are here," he said plainly, at last. "You do yourself no favours by self-flagellation. Sooner or later, it must all catch up with you." It already had, on the inside; Edmund suspected it would not be very long before the outside cracked too. "If you think things are bad now, imagine how it would be if your benefactor received news that you had fainted from malnutrition, or went raving mad one day in the lecture hall." Not just Ansem, either, for such news would no doubt be of interest to the close-knit circle, graduated or no.

He sighed a little. This was all very much more serious than he'd ever imagined when he'd cozied up to Ienzo. Just what sort of Pandora's box had he cracked open with his own dogged curiosity?