There will be RPF. Of what type? Even I don't know

"Nothing, I'm sure," Isaac says loyally. She's sipping on a purple-green concoction that has wafts of white smoke coming out of it, the house speciality. Earlier in the evening they had crammed into Tadej's dorm room, trying to make the braiding charm that Giulio taught Isaac work on her and doing shots of the cheap liquor the third-year potions majors brew, which got them more than tipsy before even leaving campus. Tadej's own glass sits empty in front of her now. She tries to flick her fingers and mouth the re-fill charm the bar enchants them with but alcohol and magic don't mix well and the glass ends up only half-full. Exams may be over but life is still full of tribulations.

"A dick?" Bling asks. Tadej groans and flips him off. Bling holds up his hands, as if he is so innocent. She'd say she doesn't know who invited him to girls night, except no, that was definitely her.

"Jonas doesn't—" Tadej protests starts, because she hasn't actually admitted to any of them the details about that one time when she and Jonas spent two days and nights locked in the library doing work on some arcane charm for professor Prudhomme and what happened when they finally figured it out. But she's pretty sure from that experience that Jonas tops.

Urška flicks her fingers, mouthing the incantation under her breath and Tadej's glass refills properly. Tadej slumps against her bony shoulder.

"You know why she picked him right?" Urška says, quietly so only Tadej can hear. "He isn't competition." Tadej nods sadly. She doesn't deserve Urska being nice to her, not after the whole Primoz disaster during Tadej's first term, but Urška is a better person than she is. Life would be so much easier if Tadej could be in love with her instead.

"Whatever," Tadej says, even though she suspects that Urska is right. During her term abroad in Italy, when she wasn't busy cramming as many of the Vegni-school incantations into her brain as she could and doing the most exhilarating creative spellwork of her life, Tadej spent a lot of time going over all the reasons she'd told herself for why she and Jonas couldn't work—they had been competing for the same PhD spot for the entirety of their studies, they were polar opposites, Jonas was going to go back to Denmark the moment she didn't get into Prodhomme's programme and Tadej would never hear from her again— and realised that they were fucking idiotic, in the face of the very obvious fact that Tadej was missing her like crazy. She had been ready for the big romantic gesture, when she returned. The one thing she hadn't counted on was Jonas just moving on. And certainly not with a guy, and one who was such a criminally lame hipster. Tadej is pretty sure the antipathy is mutual.

"Let's dance," Tadej says and pulls herself up from her chair. So what, Jonas isn't into her? Exams are over and she's handed in her thesis. All that's left now is to wait for results. Tadej knows she poured everything she has into it—it's not like she had much of a personal life the past six months. She deserves a little reward.

**********

Tadej isn't sure how many hours have passed. She remembers flashes—screaming her heart out to the same Twisted Sister's song that played when she came here with Jonas for the first time, her arms slung around Urška and Bling, swaying to the beat with Isaac, ordering more drinks. If Jonas and Matteo are still at the bar, they have made themselves blessedly scarce. At some point, Tadej remembers the spell she made up in Rome, something silly that makes pink butterflies appear on someone's skin, like a semi-permanent tattoo, except that they move. Her professor had sighed and complimented the spellwork and then admonished Tadej for coming up with something so deft and intricate that had no practical use. But Tadej thinks it's plenty practical: the butterflies look beautiful on Isaac.

Even later, Tadej finds herself pressed against a warm body in a dark corner just before the hallway turns to the bathrooms. Isaac's mouth is sweet and warm and she giggles a little when Tadej kisses her. She's so beautiful, her smooth brown skin and the curves of her hips and the remnants of the butterflies skitting across her skin. Tadej slides her hands up underneath Isaac's t-shirt, up to her bare tits and Isaac groans into her mouth. Jonas and Tadej have kissed all of two times, that one time in the library, delirious from the feeling of solving an unsolvable puzzle, and a second time, just before Tadej left for Italy. Tadej had still been licking her wounds from Jonas outdoing her in the fourth year spellwork final and hadn't lingered as much as she should have, knowing what she does now. She wishes she could say that she would have stayed if she could turn back time (that spell exists and it's forbidden for a reason), but Tadej had needed Italy like she needed air to breathe. The stuffy university halls of Paris, the narrow-minded professors who only believed in one way of writing spells, had been slowly driving her insane. Their timing has always been horrible.

Isaac is looking up at her like a question mark. They must have stopped kissing a while ago.

"Sorry," Tadej says, suddenly shook out of her drunken stupor. "Fuck, I am stupid." Isaac shakes her head but she doesn't look too upset. Tadej is pretty sure that she and Giulio have some sort of unresolved thing going on and that she isn't secretly in love with Tadej. Hopefully that works out better for her than it has for Tadej. Still, at some point making out with all your friends when you're drunk is no longer cute.

Tadej stumbles down the hallway, back to where the music is playing and almost bumps into someone.

"Hey," Tadej exclaims and looks up. It couldn't be anyone else.

Jonas looks stupidly good. Her ponytail is a little askew, tiny blond hairs sticking to her face, but she still looks all proper otherwise, in her knit polo shirt and short skirt. The hem ends high up her naked thighs. Tadej wants her with the same raw, unadulterated desire as she always has since that charms class in first year, when Jonas had been the only one other than her to get a fifth-category spell right on the first try and Tadej had looked at her, and thought oh, someone else gets it like I do.

Jonas is staring back at her. Tadej feels her own kiss-swollen lips, looks down to her unbuttoned short-sleeve shirt that's leaving her sports bra exposed, the rumpled shorts. She hopes Jonas can tell she has been making out with someone else.

"Where's your little boyfriend?" Tadej asks. She hates how her voice sounds needy instead of mean.

"Don't bring him into this," Jonas says, more tired than anything. "And anyway, you seem to be enjoying yourself." Tadej feels a dark twinge of satisfaction. She hates and loves it in equal measures. No one brings this side out in her the way that Jonas does, but then, no one ever challenged her like Jonas has. Tadej's spells wouldn't be half as good, as sharp and precise, if she hadn't honed them against Jonas and Jonas would probably still suck at making up a nursery rhyme from scratch let alone a higher-order incantation. Tadej sees herself everywhere in Jonas and Jonas everywhere in herself. That's why she can't just do what all her friends have been telling her and let this go.

Tadej steps closer, pushes Jonas against the nearest wall. She can feel Jonas' breath against her face, the tension crackling. Tadej would need to only whisper a few words for there to be actual sparks. She wants to do something—shake Jonas, kiss her, punch the wall. But it's Jonas who moves first, grabbing Tadej's face and pulling her in. The kiss is hungry, urgent, nothing like the previous times or anything Tadej has ever experienced before. Tadej feels their joint magic swirl around them, like they've both been turned inside out, an explosion of colour and sensation. Most people think it's a myth, the spontaneous reaction of magical potentialities in two people, but Tadej knows better now. Jonas flips them around and hikes one of Tadej's legs around her waist, grinding up against her. Tadej is so wet. She needs to touch Jonas everywhere.

Down the hallway, someone yells out in pain, like they just ran into a pointy object and the spell breaks, literally. Tadej stumbles back and wipes her mouth in regret. Two ill-advised make-outs in the span of thirty minutes. This has to be a new personal record. She really does not care about Jonas' hipster boyfriend, but she isn't going to be reduced to illicit kisses in a dingy bar, with him just around the corner.

"Tadej, I—if I'd known—" Jonas says and her voice sounds so raw and urgent that it tears through Tadej's insides, through all her carefully built defences. But it doesn't help at all, really, that things could have turned out differently. They didn't.

Tadej has learned how to stitch wounds back together and conjure castles out of thin air but there is no spell in the world that can stop your heart from splitting in two.

Isaac is suddenly next to her again, a hand on Tadej's shoulders. "Let's go," she says, glaring at Jonas all the while, and Tadej goes.

**********

One week later, Tadej successfully completes the defence of her masters thesis to thunderous applause and Professor Prudhomme promises her his single PhD spot, the thing that she's been yearning for for the past five years, the one she knows she's earned through sweat, blood and tears. When Tadej started university, Paris was the place. There was no question that if you wanted to do spellwork, this is where you went. But Tadej isn't a starry-eyed nineteen-year-old anymore and Paris isn't the world.

On her way out of the auditorium, she sees Jonas trying to slip out through the backdoor. Tadej stops in front of her. "You can have it," she says. Jonas stares at her, not comprehending. "Paris," Tadej adds and doesn't wait for Jonas' reply. She just keeps walking.

It doesn't feel good, exactly. Tadej remembers endless hours in the library arguing back and forth with Jonas, late nights trying to outdo each other with sillier and sillier spells, the exhilaration when Prodhomme would let them face off one-on-one in class. It's woven deep into the fabric of herself. But she has to let go. Tadej has an offer from Rome and the woman who runs the Roubaix lab has been writing her long emails about experimental earth-based spells. Paris was the only thing she knew to dream of when she came here, but it's not anymore.

"Tadej," she hears Jonas' voice exclaiming, running after her down the empty corridor, the cavernous halls they have walked so many times.

"Where are you going?" Jonas asks, slightly out of breath. "I mean, if you're not staying here."

"I don't know," Tadej says. Now that the first rush has worn off it feels equally exhilarating and stupid, what she's doing. "Roubaix, maybe."

"That's not so far," Jonas says. She's smiling, for some reason, the smile that transforms her entire face, makes her so radiantly beautiful that Tadej can hardly stand to look at her.