Wednesday evening's not a bad time for lab work. Ingredients may be a little sparse, but he got some extra Tuesday morning, and the mals should be cleared out. Alexius trots over to the Manchester table as dinner winds down. "Sean, Ennis, still interested in lab buddying?"
"Excellent. I can take point and poke about for mals in exchange for first pick of what we find?" Mals aren't thick on the floor this early in the semester, but it seems a reasonable trade. And it makes it clear that he'll do the dangerous work, if he's properly compensated, not just for goodwill with Real Enclavers.
Alexius chooses to behave as though this were completely normal behavior for a building. He's memorized the blueprints and the lockers aren't on them, so they could be anywhere, right? "Heading in," he announces, and starts doing a sweep of the room. He catches an agglo studded with gel tubes and tiny clamshells, but nothing attempts to eat his face.
Alexius completes his sweep and harvests some useful ingredients. There's a bit of mercury left over, that's nice, he doesn't want to run out of supplies for his memory potion even if he will be making one-dose batches for the foreseeable future. He finds some lye as well, a good base for the shampoo he's making as a trade with a Mandarin-speaking freshman with a Friday lab.
He pauses to trap the agglo under a wastebin. If it's still there when he finishes, he'll keep it to donate to Bella's long-term project.
Would it be rude to make suggestions on the soap project? Maybe. Alexius leaves it alone for now, it's better to have a lookout who's paying attention.
He glances over at Ennis while he waits for a mixture to boil. "Oooh, that's a color alright. I see why you wanted to use it."
"Good to know!" Maybe he ought to check with New York, their freshmen might have something to trade for his personal spells. But that seems like it would involve politics, not all the enclaves are Sean-needs-to-meet-people level of friendly.
Oh, wait. Solution. "How'd you and Julia end up talking?" Wait, shit, was that an insulting question? They're both enclavers.
Alexius appreciates a fellow businessperson. (He is still not totally clear on Ennis' gender and it seems supremely awkward to have to ask.)
"Sounds like a match made in heaven." Also, who the heck wears mundane makeup in death prison? Alexius is generally bewildered by cosmetics, but surely they're a genuinely bad priority in the Scholomance?
Either way, it's not something one complains about to the cosmetics expert.
Was that a metaphor? It sounds like a metaphor. If so, props to Julia for subtlety. "I should maybe ask the void for an untastiness spell, I bet I could get one. Probably wouldn't be able to cast it yet but I could almost certainly learn it." It might also be interesting to find a spell or potion that makes you actually poisonous to mals, but that seems like the sort of clever idea that you get to use exactly once.
"Can do."
When the time comes, Alexius lowers his voice as much as he safely can, and cups his hands around his mouth in a makeshift directional funnel. As he recites encouraging stanzas to his growth potion, a faint murmur is audible over the bubbling, but no individual words.