“Listen up, pal—I am two days from this paper on French political thought determining whether I pass this course on European politics,” and that won’t save me from having to do a fourth year at what is typically a three-year school, but fuck that. “Which means right now, my body is being held together by obscure facts about the French Revolution. I don’t care how hot you are, if you don’t get out of that room in the next ten seconds, I will grab you by that tank top you think makes you look effortlessly relaxed but really makes you look like you’re trying too hard and go full Robespierre on your ass.”
The guy peels back from me with a tawdry grin.
Then I hear what I said.
Ohhhhhh for fuck’s sake.
“Hot, eh?” His eyes trail over me so very, very slowly, but his conceited smirk is an equalizer to any reaction that tries to prickle along my skin.
“Not…” I stutter. “That isn’t the point of what I said.”
“Nah. Rather the bit where you wanted to grab me by my tank top and do what with me?”
Jesus fuck. “Get out of my study room.”
His jaw cocks to the side and he arches one thick brow. “Or what? You’ll enact your fancy weedeath threat?”
This situation.
Might be getting away from me.
I’m in too deep now. So I hold, seething, and the guy chuckles dryly.
“Christ, but this university will kill us all.” He scratches his forehead and fixes me with a resolved glower. “I got my own overhanging schedule of misery to dance with, so bring it on, Coffee Shop.”
He punts my foot out of the way and slams the door in my face.
I grab the knob, but he instantly locks it, and I rattle the handle futilely. I swear I hear him laugh inside.
Part of me wants to hammer on the door again, cause all kinds of pandemonium until he gives it up. But I don’t want to risk being thrown out of the library or losing access to this study room entirely, so I force myself to breathe slowly through my nose.
What would I do if I wasn’t mentally and emotionally drained from school and home shit, and overall stretched in like seventeen directions? What would I do. What would I…
No. Screw that.
I don’twantto take the High Road.
I don’twantto do the responsible thing because Ididthe responsible thing and this asshole isin my study room.
So what would my brother do? Or what would he have done before he reformed, back when he was a whirlwind of rashness and chaos?
I look down at my hand and flex my palm.
Christmas’s magic lets me spread my Holiday’s cheer far and wide. It also lets me create a lot of things spontaneously.
Like, for instance, for a totally innocent example, tinsel.
Enough to fill a whole study room?
This is a horrific use of magic. It breaks pretty much all thedon’t use excessive displays of magic around normal peoplerules, but Dad isn’t really in charge of Christmas anymore, is he? Coal is. And Coal would absolutely be behind this use of Christmas’s magic.
So fuck it.
There’s a moment. Where I’m staring at the door. And I think to myself,This is my rock bottom.
But I might as well find out what the full depth of my rock bottom looks like. Maybe there’s something interesting down here, like my dignity.
I lay my hand flat on the door and grab on to every connection I have to Christmas’s magic andpummelthat study room with tinsel. In Cambridge blue, school spirit and all.
