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Then CHRISTIAN asked, "What is the reason of the discontent of PASSION?" The INTERPRETER answered, "The governor of them would have him stay for his best things till the beginning of the next year; but he will have all now. But PATIENCE is willing to wait."
Evan crawled into the bed and planted his nose right into Spike’s skinny chest, just under the collarbone where he could feel the beat under his jaw, like something you could rely on.
Spike said, “Er?”
“Rosier’s got a teddy Snape,” Avery observed brightly, but he shut up when not only did Severus look flat death at him but Mulciber raised dubious (and unusually quizzical-looking) eyebrows from over his Herbology text. Since said eyebrows were on upside down, Evan must have missed a bit of a scuffle while he was out.
Possibly this was why, on the way in, Montague had hissed at him to handle his stupid roommates. He hadn’t particularly been paying attention to her, and Severus seemed calm enough that the two of them must have worked it out on their own once they were (presumably) exiled to the room. Evan would get it out of Spike later, but at the moment he had his own problems.
He did, however, wonder whether Mulciber had noticed yet. Spike usually fixed the big stuff after they had a go at each other, but also usually left a little reminder that the risk-benefit analysis for using him as target practice rarely balanced in Mulciber’s favour.
This rarely worked out well for Severus, either, since he liked to leave a little reminder that Mulciber wouldn’t notice right away. According to him, this was proper procedure according to some ancient scholar who thought someone you’d insulted shouldn’t figure it out until they got home three days later. According to Evan, this was mental because if it ever took Mulciber that long to notice he needed a haircut three times a day or whatnot, he would have forgotten the original incident and would take it as Severus starting a fight. Severus kept insisting it was important as a matter of both principle and long-term strategy.
Evan mostly felt he was taking out his Gryffindor problems on an opponent who was (unlike them) even-tempered enough to agree that things done in self-defence were, to a point, fair. But that was okay. Since Mulciber did think that, and since Severus never bothered with trying to teach the more grudge-cherishing Avery any lessons unless specifically asked to, Evan generally just shrugged and let them get on with it.
Said Mulciber enquired, apparently as a matter of duty, “Bad date?”
“Awful,” Evan admitted, looking hopefully at Spike’s upper arm, which was right next to his face, in case it might drop the Arithmancy book and drape comfortingly around his shoulders. It failed to do this.
“Didn’t put out?” Avery asked wisely.
“Have you considered not being disgusting for thirty seconds put together?” Spike asked him, doing a quite good impression of genuine curiosity.
Avery, who thought he had a sense of humour, appeared to consider this. He said, with pride, “Nope.”
“...I feel as though I’m meant to give you marks for honesty,” Severus mused, “but it hardly seems worth the tarnish to my soul. It is none of your business—”
“No, we had a very nice tumble,” Evan said sadly, before the fight could start. He was, at least in his own opinion, getting better at not sounding hasty at times like this.
He felt bones shift under his face in a way that meant Spike was looking down at him. Skeptically. “In which case I’m meant to shower you with sympathy because…?”
“Was it a Hufflepuff?” Mulciber asked, more interested. “Did you say ‘yes yes yes,’ and then she decided that meant you’re engaged now?”
“Aargh,” Severus articulated.
After a moment, Avery repeated, “Aargh?”
“He means Mulciber’s idea that Hufflepuffs are out to trap everyone into marrying them is based on the idea that they’re all just Slytherins pretending to be nice to lull everyone into a false sense of security,” Evan translated, “and also that he thinks it’s silly.”
“It is silly,” Severus insisted. He hadn’t pushed Evan away yet, and this made Evan’s awful afternoon immeasurably better. It was probably the feeling of getting away with something. “People you trick don’t have to be loyal to you. The ur-Hufflepuff wouldn’t be satisfied with that.”
“Assuming such a creature exists,” Evan remarked. He’d gone out with a few of them last year, and in his opinion Mulciber was dead right about Violet Macmillian, at least. And maybe slightly right about Orpheus Burke, who otherwise seemed a decent chap and could do a clever twisty thing with his wrist that Evan was working on replicating.
Not that he’d gone out with Macmillian; he had some sense of self-preservation, whatever Spike liked to very hypocritically say about Seekers. But she’d groped him a lot after Quidditch games and occasionally in the halls without the excuse of a party, so he felt he had enough information to judge with.
“Assuming such a creature exists,” Spike agreed, genially enough.
“Whereas we know for a fact hat-stalls do,” Mulciber defended his idea. “ You kept us from dinner a good ten minutes, Snape, if you’ll recall.” Here Avery shot a low-key glare at Spike, as though he still resented a brief and very informative delay five years ago. “And Huffies are usually slower than most to Sort.”
Evan had not particularly noticed this, and rather thought Mulciber was making it up based on the assumption that Hufflepuff was a last resort for everyone and the Hat treated it that way. He personally thought this was rubbish, considering the Huffies were the least-stressed looking students at school most of the time and were also, according to Lucius, taking over the Ministry. But it was no good telling Mulciber anything.
Besides, letting people assume you were nice did lull them into a sense of security. False or otherwise. There was no denying it and, in fact, denying it out loud would just make Spike paranoid he really was up to something.
Which would normally be perfectly manageable, but this wasn’t a good time. Evan was going to block that unsubtle idiot Mulgrew from making team Captain when Gamp graduated if it was the last thing he did.
Since that might have to involve regrettable rumours or worse if Mulgrew put in a good performance this year and managed to convince Slughorn it was ‘his turn’ without coming off ungraceful, Evan had been rather busy laying precautionary groundwork. For now, it was best to avoid unnecessary attention. Mulgrew was so keen on quick wins that he thought Spike should be encouraged to draw all the Bludgers even when Slytherin started the game dead last for the House cup. Evan wasn’t going to stand for it.
“Two minutes, at most. And I still don’t understand why I’m supposed to feel sorry for you and not shove you off the bed. I am,” he conceded gravely, patting Evan’s back like an amiable elder, “prepared to give you the benefit of the doubt, but I have to agree with Mulciber—”
“Someone quick, I want that recorded and witnessed!”
“—That you haven’t thus far presented us with any reason to believe you had a bad date by any sane person’s standards.”
“Well, I didn’t say I did, by any sane person’s standards,” Evan conceded. “Mine, though.” He felt itchy and dirty, as a matter of fact, although he thought it best not to say so in case Spike got worried and Mulciber misunderstood on purpose, packed him off with glee to Madam Pomfrey, and started scurrilous rumours about Evan's forethought and charmwork in the area of social diseases.
Eventually, the quality of the silence notified him that he was meant to keep talking, so he explained, “We had some weed after and she started talking about my house.”
“She was insulting Slytherin?” asked Severus, confused and affronted and instantly murderous in a way that made Evan smile and throw an arm around his unhealthy skinny waist.
“She doesn’t like… your dad’s art?” Avery asked, even more puzzled.
“Come on, Tim,” Mulciber said, putting his book down with an uncharacteristically sympathetic glance at Evan that he found oddly irritating, for something he probably ought to encourage.
He didn’t begrudge him the envy, though. Mulciber’s family had standing enough, but they weren’t Sacred Twenty-Eight like Evan’s and Avery’s, and they hadn’t recovered yet from what had happened to their investments when Evermonde had banned wizards from getting involved in the Great War.
“This is going to be boring,” Mulciber continued, and the subtle look of contempt he slipped Spike for not understanding something obvious tidily cleared up the question of why Evan had found himself irritated. For one thing, it was hypocritical: Avery had been just as confused as Severus, and Avery didn’t have Severus’s excuse of a family with nothing for gold-diggers to covet to keep him innocent of this particular sort of trap. But was Mulciber judging Avery for being clueless? Of course he wasn’t. “And I have that new spell I want to try out.”
“Not on people," Severus dictated immediately and also hopelessly. He sighed at their backs.
In the silence that followed the closing door, he and Evan had a little silent conversation (at least, Evan thought they did) where Evan pointed out by means of tilting his head a bit that Severus could go tell a prefect if he felt that strongly about it, and Severus replied first with raised eyebrows that said I just did and then, when Evan wasn’t inclined to jump up and do anything dramatic, with a depressed little sigh that conceded it wouldn’t accomplish anything except to invite reprisals.
This was true: since Mulciber didn’t seem to have either a particular target or destination in mind, actually stopping him would be a bit tricky. Evan nodded against Spike’s jumper, a little sadly but unable to find the energy to get worked up about it. There was no use getting worked up about Mulciber anyway. He just happened.
“Right,” Spike demanded, “what did he understand that I didn’t.”
“That I meant my actual, physical house. My family’s house. Where I live.” He considered this in the light of his house being mausoleum-like at the best of times, and corrected himself, “Where I go when I’m not here.”
“You’re depressed because she didn’t like your house?” Spike frowned. He didn’t say if I got depressed because people wouldn’t like my house, I’d never get out of bed, but Evan could tell he was thinking it. It was in the quiver of bemusement at the bottom of his voice that wasn’t quite crossing into either scorn or amusement at Rich People’s Problems, but was considering it.
“No,” Evan explained dolefully, rolling off somewhat reluctantly to stare tragically up at him, “that’s not it. Everyone likes my house. It’s got a square mile of roses, more or less, and a gazebo. And a ballroom, or at least I think that’s what the indoor quidditch pitch was meant to be when they built it."
"... You have a what." This was not so much a question as an announcement of profound disbelief. Spike's face was trying to be neutral, but his voice was so flat you could have walked on it, and Even could badly smell the affronted Northern disapproval.
He grinned at it, and offered, "It doesn't work very well for grown-up brooms, but I think they don't want to turn it back on case someone expects them to stay in the country long enough to host a ball."
Spike looked even more disapproving.
Since Evan wasn't sure whether Spike was now disapproving the waste of space or this was simply his default reaction to thinking about Evan's parents, he moved on. "But it looks impressive, I s'pose, and I used to go swimming in the master bathroom when my parents were out. It’s on the Historic Magical Buildings Registry. The house, not the bathroom; Mum put the bathroom in. But also,” he added grimly, “the gazebo.”
People kept coming to the house to walk around the gardens and get handfast in the gazebo. It had come over with the family from France, back in the thirteenth or fourteenth century or something.
Evan was, of course, pleased that people loved their roses, and the showing-off-the-house was good advertising for the firm and everything. Visitors scared the goats though, and then the gardens weren’t quite so pleasant to walk in as usual until the elves noticed.
Evan was also pleased that the roses were treated to such high-quality fertilizer, and was even prepared to call tourists a beneficial part of his house’s life cycle. He did not see why the elves felt they had to tell him about it in detail.
Besides, he’d always been expected to let them in, as the lone human resident of the estate, what with his parents being out of the country all the time. Then either they invited him to the reception with pity, which disrupted his whole day and didn’t feel very nice, or he didn’t get any of the wedding food at all.
And Linkin made him inspect the gazebo before every handfasting to make sure Linkin had got it sparkling clean (which… it didn’t sparkle; it was old and not made of shiny things), and this involved a very tall, very wobbly ladder which hadn’t gotten much safer even after Evan had learned Reparo. And he couldn’t even complain about it because Linkin got insulted at the suggestion that, if Evan fell, he would actually hit the ground.
And now he was sitting next to Spike (possibly genius was catching?) he was realizing he should have been using a broom the whole time. A full-sized one was big for the space, but surely his old one was still in the basements.
They made Linkin nervous though, which was Evan's own fault. Or, at least, six-year-old-Evan's own fault.
“...You’re depressed because she likes your ridiculous house. Do I get to be depressed now?”
“We went on one date,” Evan explained, feeling grumpy. “And—”
“Shagged.”
“And as soon as she got high she started talking about how nice her books would look on rosewood shelves, and how she’d always wanted to know what first editions smelled like.”
“...Ah.” Severus smiled, his eyes going narrow and a bit chilly. Evan admired the way he could do that. When Evan got mad, he just looked like a sulky blond sheepdog. It wasn’t just that black eyes were better for it than blue-ish; he did this thing with his eyebrows that Evan had already sketched about fifteen times and wasn’t tired of yet. “A bookish sort. Who was it, pray? I’m always looking for someone new to talk literature with, as you know.”
“I know I’m not telling you,” Evan retorted, smiling up at him. “You’re very transparent and she didn’t mean to say it, she was stoned.”
“So she meant to not say it and convince you she—”
“No, Spike,” Evan said patiently, rolling back the other way again so he could cuddle up with his head in Spike’s lap. “I don’t think she meant anything of the sort. It was just a date. She didn't mean anything by it; we were stoned and she was just talking. It’s just depressing that that’s what was on her mind, and maybe why she wanted to go out with me.”
“We are not living a Regency novel,” Spike said in a contradicting-him tone. “Being attracted to someone for their estate is… outdated.” Except he sounded as if he were saying ‘vile.’
“Well, there’s always something, though,” Evan pointed out reasonably, feeling very warm and comfortable and not half so depressed anymore now that he was being argued with and still not being shoved out of Spike’s bed. Which, since it was Thursday, still smelled cozily like elvish laundry soap and just a little like spices and Spike.
Mulciber had an extra pillow from home, shaped like a log, and Avery had a quilt. Spike’s bed, like Evan’s, only had what the Hogwarts elves put on it. Evan liked that. It made him feel that Spike was all-in on being here, like he was.
“Meaning…?”
“Well, you’ve got to have a reason to notice someone,” Evan pointed out reasonably. “Okay, usually it’s because they’re pretty or someone told you they liked you, or something, but if she’s also dating strategically it’s completely fair to evaluate your prospects by whether they’ll be good financial partners. I mean, it’s bad taste to say so on the first date—”
“Well, if you’re already going to shag on the first date,” Severus drawled.
“What’s wrong with that?” Evan blinked up at him.
“Other than ‘I can’t imagine why you’d want to’—”
Evan’s jaw dropped a little. “You can’t?”
“...No? Other than that, how about: Mulciber isn’t entirely wrong, much as it pains me to say it, in that if your prospective dates are, er, ‘dating strategically’ it does rather seem like bad tactics to give them an intimate claim on you they can point to during… is ‘negotiations’ a relevant term here?”
“Potentially,” Evan agreed, quite cheered up and vaguely sensing a Project on the horizons of his future, “but let’s go back to your not being able to imagine why.”
“...Because it sounds awful?”
“It’s really very nice, Spike.” Evan was, to do him credit, trying hard not to laugh at his best friend. It just wasn’t working terribly well. Spike’s face was so very kneazle-dipping-its-paw-into-a-bath-of-smelly-water. “It’s not awful at all ; it’s fun and you don’t have to think up things to say that won’t start an argument.” Spike made a reluctant that-is-admittedly-a-plus face, so he grinned and pressed on. “ You didn’t think it was awful when I kissed you last year, did you?” He paused, suddenly worried. “I mean, did you? I know you didn’t expect it…”
“No, that wasn’t awful,” Severus resented admitting it.
He was, however, also chewing down on the smile his mouth wanted to make, the way he did, so Evan tugged him down and kissed him again. Somewhat to Evan’s surprise, it was even nicer than the first time, and that had been very nice even though he’d been all worked up with exasperation and still coming down from being scared Spike was going to get himself bludgered to death. It was actually nicer than tumbling with Blishwick had been, not half an hour earlier.
That was probably mostly because he’d been working to make a good impression and trying to work out whether she’d be a good match for him, and had assumed she was doing the same. Also because Evan’s mother had suggested trying things out with her, and that made things intrinsically less fun.
However, she’d been quite good with her mouth, whereas Severus frankly had no idea what to do with his and wasn’t even trying. But Severus didn’t particularly want (and, in most cases, wouldn’t accept) anything from him, except for someone to study with and, worst-case, help him deal with Narcissa when she got particularly tyrannical.
Spike was just indulging him. Which, indulgence not being something he was often inclined to give anyone, made Evan warm all over.
When he let Spike go, he had to smile at the return of the whacked-over-the-head-with-a-full-watering-can expression. “See? And it’s nicer when you do more.”
“There’s really no need to be so smug,” Spike informed him tolerantly.
“I just think you should have a tumble sometimes,” Evan said. “You’re always so tense, Spike.” He let his hand drop from Spike’s visually-unfortunate-but-secretly-cat-fine hair (okay, so he’d only mostly let him go) to poke at his friend’s shoulder muscles, which felt as knotty as ever.
“Evan.” It was still the tolerant tone. “What are you going to do with the information that I’ve kissed you?”
Evan frowned and thought about it. Smiling winningly, he batted his eyes and suggested, “Remind you it wouldn’t be the first time, next time one of us feels like it?”
“You are an idiot,” Spike remarked tolerantly, and bent down to kiss him again.
Evan made a happy mmmn noise and snuggled into his bony face. You could always feel Spike’s magic, just a bit, when you were within about twenty feet of him. He was one of those people, like Lucius and Lockhart and Dumbledore and Evans and Sirius and Wilkes, except less embarrassing. Narcissa had it too, but she could turn it off and was never embarrassing.
Evan could feel him a lot right now, and the faint taste of radishes was a perfect accompaniment, ringing a note like the smell of wet granite. When Spike was okay, his magic always felt like being up high on a stone tower in a summer rain, with everything so warm that being doused felt as good as a hot shower in winter, and that clean smell all around, and maybe a few rays of light saying hello through the heavy clouds. Blishwick was fit and responsive and everything, but as far as the magic and the sense of being together with someone went, it was a bit like trying to feel her through two or three winter cloaks.
That was usual for his dates, though, come to think of it. He usually had a good time, but never in a way that made him think more about someone or miss them.
On the other hand, Evan realized without feeling terribly fussed about it, he and Blishwick had smoked after they’d had their tumble, and he might still have been a bit under the influence now. But on the third hand, as far as he recalled from kissing Spike under the bleachers, it had felt like this then, too. He certainly hadn’t been on anything then; it had been right after a game. But Spike was always more everything than everyone but Sirius (who Evan certainly was not going to kiss; not even on the cheek at family Christmas until he stopped being a troll at school), so that was only natural.
“And a hedonist,” Spike added, fighting a smile with, from the feel of his mouth, limited success.
“Mmm-hmmm-mmmmmn,” Evan agreed, undisturbed. He liked the feel of Spike’s fingers on his face, although he couldn’t have said exactly why. There shouldn’t have been anything exciting about it, and, really, there wasn’t. It just felt good, like Spike was doing it because he wanted to. And it made him think about that time Spike had been spitting mad at him but had given him a rubdown anyway because he was all bruised. Spike had the best hands. Evan hadn’t done a comprehensive survey, but he was working on it, and so far Spike’s really were the best. The shape of his bones under the skin was so beautiful, and he had a strength you didn’t expect from the look of him, and a delicacy of touch that you did.
He was rewarded for his incoherence with another kiss, and stretched out blissfully under it.
But, “Evan,” Spike sighed, the air of it warming Evan’s temple, “if I kissed anyone else, what would they do with the information that I had?”
“Probably also be emboldened to kiss you more?”
“Probably gossip,” Severus pointed out in a you’re-being-naive tone. “And then what do you think would happen?”
“...Er,” Evan admitted, slumping lower in Spike’s lap. Because the answer was, of course, that either they would spread the news on purpose to be cruel, saying nasty things about Spike in the process, or it would get out into the gossipsphere quite innocently, and then the Gryffindor trolls would make the lives of both Spike and the Spike-kisser a complete misery, until she turned on him too.
Evan didn’t think this was completely true, but it was enough of a risk that he could see how Spike wouldn’t think dating was worth it. Although he maintained that Spike didn’t have enough of an idea of what the worth of ‘it’ was to be able to make a useful assessment. “What about Evans? They already hate you for being friends with her. Even if she did gossip it wouldn’t really change anything, would it?”
“Tried that,” Spike said, as indifferently as though this wasn’t a world-shaking revelation.
“When?!” Evan demanded, shooting up on one elbow.
“Yuletide, last year,” Spike shrugged.
“Severus Snape, look at you all secrets and casual!” He punched Spike’s leg in delight. “So? So?”
Spike looked at him like he was crazy. “Nothing happened to talk about. We got about six inches apart and got so uncomfortable we both started laughing. It was extremely strange and I think we were both relieved to call it a bad job and stop worrying about whether we should give it a go just because everybody thinks we’re going to.”
“Spike,” he complained, deeply disappointed.
“...Evan…?”
“You would have looked good together,” he sulked. “Like embers.”
“You are such a lunatic,” Spike said, smiling just a little with perplexity, and reached over to brush some hair out of his face.
“Well, you would,” he insisted, leaning into the touch even though, given how Evan’s hair liked to behave, neatening it was a completely lost cause. “With her hair, you could do it with lighting like one of those Rembrandts.”
“...Right, Evan, you know if you say ‘do it’ in this context more or less everyone will think you’re suggesting mood lighting to shag by.”
“That could work too,” Evan agreed, thinking about it. “But I meant—”
“I know what you meant,” Severus eye-crinkled at him. “But to the best of my knowledge you meant oils, and aren’t you still on watercolours?”
“You are cruel and unkind,” Evan said sadly. There was no point trying to argue with a truth he’d been complaining about since they got back to school. It already felt like forever. Watercolours were so… watery. Even when you got the colours strong. He thought the textury paper might be partly to blame, but either way, they felt like being asleep in a way that made him want to break his brushes and fingerpaint with his own blood.
“I am cruel only to be kind,” Severus parried solemnly, and then pursed his lips in a mockery of consideration, but with light in his eyes. “...No. no, that’s a lie, I’m just laughing at you. And yet,” he added with a grand, noble tilt of his head that did in fact make him look quite Roman-senatorial, “it may serve to spur your ambition.”
“...Does my ambition need spurring?” Evan asked, a bit alarmed.
Spike looked over at his collection of sketchbooks, face softening. “Well. No. Actually, you should probably stop sneaking out at three in the morning.”
“But clouds around the moon, Spike. With the astronomy tower. And the clocktower. And the... you know, those tall arches on the bridge?”
“You can’t even see those from the castle. What are you doing, breaking into the broom shed to fly across the lake?!”
Even did his best not to look shifty and rushed on, “And the moonlight on the lake, Spike! It’s different every night, what with the clouds and the wind speed, even if you always sit in the same place! And sometimes the hippogriffs come out for a fly. And you know if the moon’s too high it doesn’t fit naturally in the picture. And you can’t force it; the shadows go all wrong.”
“Yes, but detentions aren’t pleasant, as a rule, and they cut into one’s study time.”
“They schedule detentions for during History class?” Evan mused, perking up. “Maybe I should try going around prefects’ curfew and getting caught. Flitwick only looks like he’s thinking about admitting he saw me when exams are close, but I could go out on...” he considered the professors’ patrol schedule. “Thursdays? Babbling would definitely assign one if she caught me out after patrol hours, but I don’t think it’d be anything dreadful and it’s so hard to concentrate with Binns droning on.”
“They do not,” Spike said repressively with unimpressed eyebrows (seriously, how did he do that? Evan had practised in front of a mirror and he could only raise just one if he used his fingers. Spike could move them independently), radiating threats about what would happen if he had to spend their study time either alone with Mulciber’s sense of humour or outside in the castle proper where he was less safe than that.
“I want to work in oiiiilllls,” Evan whined, throwing a dramatic arm over his eyes as he flopped back onto his back. “I want to play with shadows without getting charcoal all over my clothes. I mean deep shadows, and Grandpère says using ink with watercolours is cheating and I’m not allowed to mix media he hasn’t said I’ve mastered on their own.”
“I thought he had graduated you on ink.”
“Yes, but not watercolour.”
“Ink is watercolour, really, though, isn’t it? You can control the saturation the same way, and there are plenty of colours.”
“Yes, but you’re talking about inkbrush, which is a completely different thing from what Grandpère means. He’s just talking about quillwork.”
“Still, I don’t see why you couldn’t get some pigment sticks. Or, here's an idea, do what you want for the ones you're not showing him."
“Because you’re being practical with an eye to the end product and he’s trying to make me master a specific tool before I experiment with it. I bet your mum wouldn’t have let you use a copper cauldron to compensate for lazy knifework.”
“...All right,” Spike conceded, polite enough not to bring up that cheating with forgiving cauldrons hadn’t been an option when he was learning to brew. “I suppose that’s fair. Ish.”
“Ish,” Evan agreed. “And every time I try to use black in watercolour it just looks sort of… dreamy. Which is nice but not what you want all the time. Therefore, for bright spots at night, charcoal. The elves give me dirty looks, Spike. I think they think I’m climbing up secret chimneys and won’t tell them where so they can finish the sweeping. Tell Grandpère I’m brilliant and he should let me play with the saturated paints with the texture. You can use my parchment!”
“I’m sure my voice will carry scads of weight with your grandfather,” Severus agreed drolly. “He will fall all over himself to agree with a mudblood with no artistic training or eye for aesthetics. It won’t sabotage his opinion of you at all.”
“I’m going to live in that world,” Evan decided, as if he hadn’t decided to create it for Spike already (though he wasn’t sure how to go about making his grandfather cooperate, let alone anyone else). “Anyway, my point is you’re very tense all the time and you should have a tumble sometimes. It’s nice.”
“You said that,” Spike observed, amused with him.
“Well, it is. And you feel relaxed after, if people don’t admit right out loud that they only want you for your great-whatever-grandparents’ furniture. I mean really quite relaxed, Spike. Not that I expect you to know what that word even means, but you could try it.”
“So you say. And I maintain it sounds disgusting and people say it feels good but are secretly only doing it for social cachet, to look popular.”
Evan blinked at him in surprise. He couldn’t quite tell whether Spike was honestly overthinking it or just winding him up; Spike’s poker face had gotten better since he’d snuck onto the Quidditch team. That had been late enough in the year that Evan was still, with the summer between them to delay him, catching up. “You think I’m doing it for social cachet?”
Spike eye-crinkled at him again, so probably at least mostly teasing. “I think you’re trying to be dutiful and please your mother and when they want to get their hands on you you think it’s easier and more socially graceful to go along with them than deal with the awkwardness of saying no to something while on a date.”
Trying not to focus too much on the part where Spike didn’t understand wanting to have a tumble generally but seemed to think it only natural that everyone would ‘want to get their hands on’ Evan in particular, he conceded, “Okay, maybe a little, but whether it feels good with someone is part of compatibility, which is what I’m supposed to be checking. It’s a useful shortcut, and it does actually feel good.” Smugly, he added, “I know you think kissing doesn’t feel awful because you just kissed me, and kissing’s just as disgusting as anything else when you think about it.”
Spike slid him a side-eye, amused.
“I think,” Evan went on, “that you just think that it probably takes practice to get good at it and, what with the gossip, if you weren’t good at it first time it’d get out for people to annoy you with, as if they were good the first time either.” He grinned with sunny triumph, spread his hands invitingly, and pointed out, “There’s an obvious solution here, Spike.”
This just got him stared at, with such a heavy dose of appalled that he was about to feel hurt until Spike declared, tone gushing with genuine horror, “Evan Rosier, you are the tritest cliche in the history of boarding schools.”
“You’re the one who keeps saying cliches don’t survive to get trite unless they’re mostly true,” Evan pointed out, grinning at Spike’s priorities. And also at how wide his eyes could get, considering he usually kept them ash-leaf squinty with analysis.
Because he knew when to stop pushing, when he climbed back into Spike’s lap he had the Arithmancy book in his hand. “Can we go back to the start of the chapter? I didn’t understand the bit about cross-sections in the chord-defined areas.”
“We can,” Spike said, wrapping an arm around Evan to take the book. “As long as you can explain to me what she was getting at about the effect of how much margin-space you leave around the runes. What is the use of saying something is important if you don’t say why or how?”
“I think we’re covering that in more detail closer to the hols,” Evan said, flipping to the table of contents to show him it was chapter eleven. “She can’t explain everything at once, Spike.”
Spike made a dissatisfied hmmphing noise, with an aggrieved note of why bring it up, then?
Evan laughed. “Well, I know it’s to do with proportions. And negative space. People ignore negative space, but sometimes everything happens there.”
Spike hummed a little, in his amused and skeptical I-know-what-you’re-up-to tone. Evan had frankly no idea what Spike thought he was up to; he didn’t consider that he was up to anything. But Spike seemed to be okay with whatever his paranoid brain was hallucinating, so Evan just said, “We could read ahead if you like, though. Never hurts.”
“That’s all right.” Spike shook his head, which moved his chest under Evan’s shoulders a little. Of course he hadn’t meant it, but the little tug-and-shift felt a bit like he was petting Evan’s hair and was rather lovely, in a quiet way, except for reminding Evan that they needed to get him to eat more. “Let’s progress on the chords.”