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]

Edmund, upon such ceremonious arrival, chuckled and slid into the upholstered chair facing Zexion, still bedecked in scarf and sweater (though his coat had been shed at the door) and a vigorous rosiness to cheeks and nose, as befit any good Englishman. Of all the places to get a warm cup in town, this was certainly the most intriguing. Scrupulously mannered to all appearances, and an authentically appetizing menu of brews and bonbons to tempt the palate, yet the appeal of the forbidden was almost maddening at times.

"It happens to the best of us," he said with a benevolent grin, like a friendly priest doling out dispensation to his penitent parishioner for a rather innocuous confession. Coy tongue notwithstanding. Zexion was always so neat, how did that little bit of liquid bedew his face? "What is it about chocolate that seems so heartening in this weather?"

Tea was cozy, to be sure, but a mug of warm cocoa simply made all things better no matter how fierce the blizzard or bitter the wind. He reached eager for the empty cup on his side of the table, and the elegant little pitcher full of steaming chocolate. The sweets would simply have to wait a moment. "Quite a feat, coming out in this weather. I would suspect you of cheating with a Corridor, but your nose is plenty evidence to the contrary." A sly look and a hint of a wink over his first sip (ahhh heavenly), for he knows his own nose is even pinker if possible, and he has no such measures as Corridors at his disposal.

Thread Dos: The Jolly Good Private Academy Bedfellows

[illicitresearch]

Who: Ienzo & Edmund Pevensie
Where/When: A Private Boys' Academy, 1940's England
Warnings: A slew of Boarding School Tropes, probably (Implied Fagging, Disciplinary, Peer Heirarchy) Underaged Smut


YIKES THERE'S JUST A LOT OF SETUP HERE, I'M SORRY


The term was shaping up to be considerably more hideous than last.

It wasn't even that he was in any position to be picked on, really, as the names of last year's graduates still held considerable weight, and Ienzo had been slavishly dilligent to a considerably tight ring of them. In fact, it was thoroughly unusual for a overly bright boy who passed entrance exams three years ahead of schedule to be treated as an equal among a cabal of senior students, when he certainly wasn't related by blood in any way, and was rumored to have lost both parents.

Ienzo might have been pecked at for his achievements if he'd chose to be precocious about them, but his calculated demeanor had pulled in even tighter and more cautious since the departure of his elder 'peers'. But a merciful administrator must have caught wind of trouble before summer holiday ended, because Ienzo found himself transferred to another dormitory entirely, and rooming with a fresh set of boys his "own age".

Their youth felt alarmingly alien to him. There were tears and fights and punishments inflicted on the entire dormitory forthe outbursts of one or two brats, and older students bullying them in line...

Ienzo sort of fell very aloof to it all, untouchable as he buried himself in his books, to lessons mismatched to the fellows he was rooming with, which was an added reason to be solitary. He didn't speak much, but when he did it was with all the quietly tamed authority of an adult, except on the very rare occasions when darkness winked sudden life into his eyes and something subversive crept its way past his lips, usually too subtley murmured as inward commentary for anyone to notice, but once or twice bringing a rowdy room around to dead silence and long, wary staring.

Then the new master of Religious Studies suggested to one of his blueblooded favorites that Ienzo ought to have his unruly bangs managed, which brought him into a freshly hellish, stonefaced war with an upper year who regularly pinned him down whenever he could with a visciously pointy pair of steel shears, stealing forelocks one at a time, snip by snip. His hair looked more like an assymmetrical modernist mess by the day, but Ienzo staunchly refused to have it all set sensibly, glowering through the jagged ends.

(Braig told a thousand variations of how he lost an eye, absolutely none of them true, but those scissors were beginning to give Ienzo nightmares of becoming a bald cyclops in his own struggles.)

The trees shed their leaves prematurely too, this year, and the frost came unseasonably early. School blazers, doubled kneesocks and an old woodstove set at the opposite end of an institutional row of steel bunks didn't do much to stave off chill. Ienzo spent many nights fiercely lonely and fitfully awake, shifting his knees against the sheets to generate some friction. He missed Even's scoldings and Dilan's gruff pessimism, which had proven an unsual comfort in a backwards way. He missed having stalwart Aeleus to match stride with across campus, even if his firm imprint on the memories of most upper years still proved a salvation from getting kicked around and spat on.

But most of all he missed their enigmatic ringleader's bed, and warm whispers against his ears of nihilistic philosophies born from parts of the world thought thoroughly unsavoury. Stuff that made his mind feel as if it might explode out his ears while his heart hammered and swelled and made his whole body ache with queerest wanting. No one had even heard from him since graduation day. He wasn't off to any pretigious university (though he easily could have) but it surely something greater than the pettiness of formal academia. Where exactly had he gone to? It remained something of a mystery, a riddle he was still trying to piece out in the depths of his abandonment. Maybe behind enemy lines, doing work that required a certain stroke of mad genius. Or maybe he'd been a double agent all along, poisoning student bodies with wild ideas.

The only new boy of the lot in his dorm who merited any attention at all was the academy's second installment from the Pevensie family, who couldn't seem any less like his lionhearted bore of an upright, virtuous brother. Edmund seemed gripped by a peculiar snarl of identity crisis all jangled up in a barely suppressed pubscent cocktail. He seemed unconventionally wise in his pondering eyes and that made him intriguing, particularly when he occasionally piped up like someone who was also well beyond his years in this mind and as well as someone high above his social standing.

Ienzo didn't make efforts to cozy up to someone who seemed so volatile under the surface, because he couldn't afford to attach himself so early in the term. But there would be time for dreaded group projects to get to know him better, maybe. Or that casual literary society that met down in the village pub, which they'd carefully teased one another about sneaking off to after curfew, sometime. It was a testing of the waters that seemed more appetizing the closer he watched, whenever Edmund couldn't catch him looking.