14. Small Declarations of War #2
Seb’s hair is tied back at the nape of his neck, with the kind of casual, conspicuous softness that Briar can’t imagine any other boy getting away with in a school like this.
He’s wearing an open, soft charcoal hoodie over his school shirt, no waistcoat or tie, a thin, dark scab running down the right side of his forehead, so fine it’s like a crack in a screen.
It looks painfully livid against his pallid skin.
Briar remembers something an art teacher once told them, that there is no true white in the world, that it’s always made up of a patchwork of different colours.
Today Seb’s skin looks mostly grey, but there’s raw pink around his eyes, mauve in the shadows beneath them, sickly chartreuse and blue where his veins skim close to the surface.
Briar wants to hurt him.
It shocks them, that rush of feeling, not a general anger but a specific desire to inflict pain. Back in the day, Sean once said that Seb had ‘one of those faces’; he’d meant vulnerable, achingly sincere, easy to bully. Briar’s mum had been furious at him for saying it.
But Seb’s different now. It’s not vulnerability that Briar wants to pick at - it’s the opposite. The cruelty. The sneering indifference. The stupid, affected, sulky downturn to his mouth.
As if he can read Briar’s thoughts - and it always seemed like he could, when they were kids - the veneer breaks.
His mouth falls open slightly, his eyes widen that same fraction of a fraction.
He’s looking at Briar’s forehead, the bruises, the swelling, the stitches.
Briar stares back at him, daring him to say something.
When he doesn’t, Briar breaks instead. ‘Checking your handiwork?’
The noise of the refectory and the feeling of scholars pushing past recedes, until all Briar is doing is hating Seb, waiting for him to answer.
‘What?’
‘All thanks to you and your friend.’
His mouth works. ‘That was hardly his fault.’
‘Sure. I was just on my knees in your sociopaths’ clubhouse of my own free will.’
‘I don’t think anybody actually invited you to that party, Briar,’ Seb shoots back, just as quickly.
Briar’s heart thrills strangely at hearing their name in his mouth.
He’s back to cold and calculating, but his eyes aren’t quite keeping up.
He’s definitely bothered by the fact that Briar is here.
Maybe it undercuts his authority, to regularly come face to face with somebody who was there the day he made himself a wig out of cooked pasta and called himself Lady Spaghetti for the rest of the evening.
‘Right. So it’s my fault, is it? Anybody who wanders in gets what they deserve. Me, those fifth-year girls—’
‘Fifth-year girls?’ Seb says, like he’s never heard of the concept.
‘Do you think you get a pass for being so fucking vacant you can pretend you don’t notice?’
This is maybe a little too loud. A hush falls over the nearest table, the scholars there suddenly paying rapt attention.
Briar pictures the two of them standing there, how it must look on the outside: some random member of staff nobody’s ever heard of squaring up to one of the most powerful scholars at Temple.
Seb’s head is tilted to the side, his eyes narrowed. ‘Careful. I don’t think someone so expendable has any business picking fights on school grounds.’
Briar takes a step closer. Seb’s breath catches. ‘Oh, yeah?’
‘I already told you that you shouldn’t be here.’
His voice has dipped low and dangerous, and it’s making Briar’s nerves itch. It’s like he’s a natural irritant; everything about him pushes Briar closer and closer to the edge. ‘Is that a threat?’
‘A threat?’ Seb’s gaze is boring into Briar’s skull, uncomfortably steady.
‘It’s just the truth, even if you can’t accept it.
You didn’t get in. It’s been seven years and for some reason you still can’t let it go.
You had your tantrum - now, if you know what’s good for you, it’s time to grow up and go home. There’s nothing for you here.’
Briar’s hand is on Seb’s chest before either of them have time to blink. Palm flat on his ridiculous, expensive hoodie, a bit violent in the landing, not quite a shove but definitely crossing a line. It feels like an echo of something, a sick lurch of déjà vu.
The entire refectory goes deathly quiet. Seb looks down at Briar’s arm, then back up again, making piercing eye contact that only makes Briar’s anger burn brighter.
Seb’s forehead is bleeding. Briar had been sure that the cut was scabbed over, but the single drop of blood inching down his brow is proving them wrong.
The cut on their own forehead seems to be stinging in sympathy. They remove their hand from Seb’s chest to investigate, and their fingertips come back scarlet.
‘Seb,’ Briar says stupidly. ‘What—?’
Seb is looking at them with wild eyes now, almost on the verge of panic. ‘That’s not my name,’ he hisses, backing up. ‘Stay away from me.’
Briar reaches for him - to demand answers, to force him to stay and reckon with Briar’s anger - and leaves three fingers of blood smeared across the crisp white of his shirt front as he twists away.
Noise erupts immediately all over the refectory.
Briar looks up, startled, at the scholars loudly and obviously discussing this new development, and in the sea of hungry faces spots Hadley and the others at a far table, watching.
Tate gives Briar a faint wave, and Briar puts their head down and marches over to the empty seat next to him.
‘Great job keeping your head down,’ Hadley says, licking jam off a teaspoon. ‘You could be an international super-spy.’
Tate hands Briar a napkin for their bleeding brow, and Westby silently slides an untouched bowl of rice pudding across the table.
‘Why is it always so fraught between you two?’ asks Tate. ‘Are you exes or something?’
Briar chokes on their first mouthful of gloopy rice. ‘No.’
‘But you’ve kissed,’ Tate says, not phrasing it as a question.
Briar is about to say no, but this isn’t strictly true.
They’d been ten, that day Seb had insisted they run away together, when he was collapsed in the brambles with a sprained ankle refusing to get back up - in that long, horrible pause before he’d allowed Briar to haul him to his feet, with no idea how to make any of this better, Briar had held him and been clung to in return; stroked his hair, kissed his forehead, his cheeks, and eventually his bloodied mouth.
Maybe Seb had kissed Briar too. It’s lost to time, the memory blurred around the edges. They were just kids. It didn’t mean anything. Most of all Briar remembers the panic, and salt in their mouth, and wanting to shake the world apart to stop Seb from hurting ever again.
Tate interprets this silence as confirmation. ‘So it wasn’t a very good kiss, then.’
‘We were ten,’ Briar says uncomfortably. ‘Did you see he was bleeding?’
‘I think you should be more concerned with the fact that you’re bleeding.’
Hadley pushes her plate away. She’s fresh-faced today, and Briar can see the light sprinkling of freckles across the bridge of her nose, which she must ordinarily take great pains to conceal.
‘Second Trial this week,’ she says quietly. ‘Jones is in. What about you two?’
Tate and Westby exchange a look.
‘Briar’s coming?’ Tate says slowly. ‘Are you sure that’s the best idea?’
Briar bristles immediately. ‘It was my idea.’
They’ve felt helpless before. At ten, using Sean’s computer to search the word ‘depression’, diligently writing down the results in the hope that they might find some answer to Seb’s black moods.
Watching the letterbox all week after Seb’s letter came, the scruffy, empty doormat burning into their retinas.
At secondary school, alone and afloat, alienated by what felt like an innate strangeness long before they could put it into words.
No more. If there’s any chance of thwarting Bastian and his friends, Briar is going to be a part of it.
‘Well, I doubt that very much, but all right.’ Westby looks worried. Briar tells themself that’s probably just the natural arrangement of his face. ‘Are you sure you know what you’re doing, Watson?’
‘I’m doing something,’ Hadley says. ‘We’ve talked about this for years. I’m done talking. Last chance to stop a fascist in his infancy and change the course of history forever.’
After that, there’s nothing more to argue about.