Idk Either

"Quit the yapping," Grim yelled from the other side of the living room. He had a few wooden boards in his arms and a hammer balanced on top. "I need help barricading the windows."

"Right." A hum of exasperation escaped Deuce's lips while he pointed into the direction where all the commotion was coming from. The noise must have originated from the main building, and the fact that it was still audible in the Ramshackle mansion was incredibly concerning. "I don't think you realise how dire the situation is out there."

"Did someone call me?" a newcomer suddenly asked.

All four of you whirled around to find Crowley standing by the entrance to the living room. He had his arms crossed in front of his chest. Without allowing you any time to react to his sudden appearance, he rushed over to your side with wide steps. His heavy shadow loomed over you.

"Oh, it's just you, Headmaster," you began and sat up. "How are you—"

He interrupted you with a dramatic sigh. "You truly offend me, my darling child." Without further explanation, he put his hand to his forehead and sank into the couch, right next to you.

"What?" You sat up straight. "What have I done now?"

"You go around telling the dorm leaders that they're the most handsome person in the world! But you forgot about me?" A playfully offended frown decorated his face. When the resident ghosts dared to peek around the corner in curiosity, he addressed them immediately, "Did the prefect also compliment you three?"

"Of course!" the ghost in the middle exclaimed dreamily. His eyes practically took the shape of hearts when he put his hands to his chest. "My heart began beating so quickly, I thought I had come back from the dead. The prefect truly has a way with charming people, dead or alive."

His reply had the headmaster sink into the cushions of his seat even further. "Oh, how you wound me..."

Deuce furrowed his eyebrows in innocent confusion. "Is that why you came here, Headmaster?"

At his words, Crowley lazily rose to his feet again and straightened his cloak. "Partly, yes." He cleared his throat, although he sent you one last glare before moving on, "I also came because the entire campus is a warzone. The dorms have decided to band together and fight against each other to defend their leader's honour. Everyone thinks the others are lying."

"See?" Grim pointed to the windows he had already barricaded. "And you think I'm the one overreacting?"

The volume of his voice had you rolling your eyes. "Calm down, everyone." Then, you finally summoned the willpower to rise to your feet. "Can't I just talk to them?"

"You must, since you are the perpetrator."

A rush of annoyance came over you. The constant noise from the main building caused a headache to form. You rubbed the bridge of your nose. "It was just an April Fool's joke... I didn't think anyone would take it this seriously," you muttered in resignation. "These boys... Fine, I'll go out and clear things up."

Grim stopped you before you could leave the living room. His large blue eyes shone meaningfully. "Henchhuman, just in case you don't return, I wanted to tell you that..." he trailed off and took your hand into his paws. "I'll be taking your favourite scarf! You won't need it anymore, right?"

At once, you ripped your hands out of his grasp. "You're an idiot, Grim," you grumbled and simply walked around him to exit the building.

Deuce came rushing after you. "We'll accompany you, (Y/n). That's what friends are there for."

"Really? Do we have to?" Ace asked with raised eyebrows. He seemed reluctant, still remaining by the fire place where he had last stopped pacing. But even he wasn't immune to Deuce's pressing gaze, and with the headmaster joining in, he was done for. Begrudingly throwing his hands into the air, he joined your side. "Fine..."

"I'll stay here," Grim yelled after the three of you, "to make sure they don't break in and steal my tuna."

"They're in the Hall of Mirrors. Please stop them before they destroy my prized mirrors!"

°

°

°

"I knew you were a schemer, Azul. But I didn't take you for a liar."

"You call me a liar, Riddle? Me and my business are very much trustworthy. The same couldn't be said about you, though."

You arrived in the Hall of Mirrors not a second too late. The place was packed to the brim with students from every dorm. Just blinking once had been enough to lose track of Ace and Deuce. And by now, you had given up on finding them in this huge mass of people. You would have never thought that you would one day see so many people fit into this hall. But here you were, struggling to make your presence known with the loud and large crowd.

You could already see most of the dorm leaders facing off against each other in the very middle, where the students had formed a pit. But none of them seemed to hear your voice over all the murmuring.

"Come on, let's get this over with quickly," Leona said and rolled his eyes. "As soon as we have established that you're all in the wrong, I can go back to doing something more productive, such as napping."

"Guys, why can't we all be the most handsome person in the world together? I'd be open to sharing the title," Kalim said in worry when he noticed how everyone's voice dripped with malice.

"As a matter of fact, 'most handsome' is the superlative form and implies that the title is exclusively reserved for one person only." Everyone's eyes solely lay on Malleus as he spoke, his deep and calm voice bouncing off the walls to reach your ears. The air turned cold out of a sudden, and nobody dared to whisper even a single word — not even you.

But Rook dared to cut through the tangible air with his cheery voice. "Oh, a fight for beauty! This battle will be legendary!" he exclaimed in excitement, as if he had been born for this very moment. "I will gladly defend your honour, Vil."

His dorm leader didn't seem to reciprocate his enthusiasm, however. "Quit it, Rook. We all know that the prefect's compliment for all of us was in mere vain — a joke to gauge our reaction," Vil said and flicked his wrist elegantly. "Tell everyone to return to whatever they were doing previously, I have more important matters to attend to."

"Ortho, can you get me more popcorn—" a voice came from the floating tablet in the first row. An embrassed shriek escaped its speakers once everyone turned their attention to it. "Oh, I forgot to mute... Sorry, everyone." And on cue, the speakers went silent.

An awkward cough went through the crowd, but the dorm leaders quickly returned to facing off against each other.

"So, shall we begin?"

"I suppose."

Just as one was about to make the first move, you managed to stumble into the middle of the pit. "No, stop it!" you yelled at the top of your lungs.

A round of gasps went through the crowd, and everyone's eyes widened in surprise at your sudden arrival. Vil was the only exception. "Ah, the prefect has arrived," the dorm leader drawled. Knowing chuckles escaped his perfectly painted lips. "Now, would you mind enlightening the others about your little joke?"

"Right, tell the others who you really think is the most handsome."

"Yes, I want to see the grins wiped off their faces."

You hated yourself after having gazed upon their expectant faces. Most of them wore a pair of puppy eyes that gleamed brightly with eagerness. Unable to face them, you lowered your gaze in shame. "Actually, I told every one of you that you were the most handsome person in Twisted Wonderland." Nervous chuckles escaped your lips when the entire hall went deadly silent. You raised your hands into the air defensively. "Please, it was just a joke. Today is April Fool's, guys."

Riddle clicked his tongue. "A punishment for unfunny jokes is in order."

"You hurt our feelings, (Y/n)!" Kalim cried out and put his hands on his hips. When Jamil handed him a handkerchief, the dorm leader blew his nose loudly.

An unreadable smile appeared on Azul's face. "Perhaps it is time we banded together," he suggested, as if negotiating for a contract.

Your smile turned more nervous by the second, especially when they began to circle you. "Guys? It was kinda funny, don't you think?" you said, suddenly unable to hold in your laughter anymore. "Your reactions were priceless."

APRIL'S FOOLS

L

LOSERS

YOU THOUGHT

With a touch of your tender hands, you pull him down to rest against your chest.

"What's wrong?"

"I–I just…I recalled the incident of my overblot and how I hit you with that blast. H-How you nearly—" Clamping his eyes tight, Riddle dared not to finish that sentence. The boy trembles in your arms—ears fervently straining to hear the steady and melodic thump of your heart, a melody he feared he would never hear again.

A choked sob tumbles from his lips and your chest aches.

"…I'm sorry," was his quiet cry. "I'm so sorry."

✩—LEONA KINGSCHOLAR:

Peacefully fast asleep, your back was nestled snug against the Leona's chest while his firm bicep protectively curled around your ribs.

Over the course of your relationship, Leona began to realize how much he loved having you in his arms. You were at peace when you slept, untouched and untainted by the stress and pain you dealt with every day.

He crept his free hand up your torso, cold fingers slipping underneath your shirt, skimming up your stomach, and settling above the spot on your chest where your heartbeat danced vividly against his touch. Leona splays his fingers out more, fixated on how the thrum of your life felt against his skin.

It was a daily struggle to keep his emotions at bay, ensuring that his strong feelings and magic wouldn't hurt you again. The nightmarish phantom of his blot still haunts him to this day. That wrath was an ugly and hideous beast he wished to keep locked away in the depths of his mind for all of eternity.

Yet, at the soft beat of your delicate heart against his sullied hands—Already, Leona finds himself wavering, uncharacteristically weak.

An overpowering mix of stress and strain washes over him, pooling up into watery blobs and flowing down his cheeks in faint streaks as he silently wept.

"Fuck," Leona curses, pulling your dozing form closer to him. "Fuck. Fuck, I'm sorry. You don't deserve this."

✩—AZUL ASHENGROTTO:

The torment of nightmares was far worse than he remembered, but this dread he felt was unquestionably different, pressing in on him like a frigid cold. The icy sensation seeps into the marrows and dips of his flesh—his sole respite being your touch, which both warmed and scorched at his skin.

"Angelfish." Azul breathlessly sputtered, blindly patting around the bed in search of your body.

Through the fringes of his blacked out vision, he could barely make out your worried drowsy visage. This caused him to panic, pulse picking up, but you were quick to soothe him—reaching a hand out to press against his cheek. Finally finding you, the octo-mer pulled you towards his side of the bed, engulfing you in a tight hug.

Azul tried to stop the flood of tears that layered his face, but your soft lips strewn with kisses on his skin seemed to further elicit his unceasing cries. 

"I'm not going anywhere, Azul. I'm here." You whisper, cradling his face, but he was inconsolable. The octo-mer desperately clawed at your shirt as he pressed his ear deeper against your chest, practically melting into you.

The throbs of your heart echoed through his anguished mind, providing him with some semblance of comfort.

"Don't go….Please…" Azul sputters, body shaking from every deep, labored heave of his burning lungs, "Please."

✩—JAMIL VIPER:

A strangled scream awoke you from your abyssal sleep, your bleary eyes ripping open to dart here and there around the room in a manic frenzy. The ensuing shattering smash of a glass further threw your thoughts into disarray.

"Jamil?!"

Your lover had stumbled off of the bed, now kneeling against the wooden flooring with the bedsheets pooling around his hips, sheets damp from the shattered glass of water on the floor.

A bloody hand clenched at his palpitating heart, glass shards digging into his skin, as his lungs fought to maintain his breathing.

You sprang from the mattress and skidded in his direction, but Jamil scrambled away from you.

"Albi, no. There's glass. Stay away. You're going to get hurt," Jamil stammered. Holding a shaky hand up, the boy avoided your gaze.

"Jamil—" Brows pinched together, you eased towards him. "I'm not going to get hurt, don't worry."

You stepped over the shards of crystal glass with caution and made your way past, "See?"

Once you were within his reach, Jamil caved in and slowly brought you into his arms—careful with his injury. He could feel the distant sting of the cuts on his hands, but he couldn't bring himself to care.

Leaning down, he lay his head over your heart. Even though the batter of your heart was frantic and panicked, it somewhat provided a steady beat for him to follow as he worked to untangle the complexities in his thoughts. Your lover sunk against you, anchoring himself against the warmth your body radiated.

✩—IDIA SHROUD:

As the minutes pass, Idia was rapidly losing every meagre amount of confidence he managed to scrape together.

"Idia…honey? Please get up." You croon, running a hand through his flaming hair.

Though it seemed as if he didn't hear anything—Idia kept his head glued against your beating chest, refusing to get up from his position on the floor.

He's been kneeling before you for so long that the rough fabric of his pants burned and skidded against the tender skin of his knees, sending excruciating stings along the threads of his flesh.

"I—No…N-No…I can't." Idia's lips quiver, eyes glossing over as he diverts his gaze. The weight of his arms lay heavy against your legs, elbows resting by your knees while his dull nails dug into the skin at the back of your thighs.

"Why's that?" You whisper.

Idia shut his eyes. The flash of numerous dreams and nightmares he's suffered at the hands of his own demented twisted memories clouded his mind. It did not help that they were all molded out of his own self-inflicted pessimism...cruel and unforgiving. A reason as to why he couldn't bear to look at you tonight, not when the image of your mangled body was still fresh on his mind.

"I-I'm s-sor-sorry…I ca-can't get up…I need to…” he stumbles for words, his breathing picking up its pace. "I need to…need to know you're okay."

✩—VIL SCHOENHEIT:

"Vil…" You worriedly murmur, pressing your lips against his mascara-stained cheeks, not minding the bitter aftertaste it left lingering in your mouth.

Laying atop the plush silk sheets of his king-sized bed, the dorm leader's eyes were ripped wide open as his chest heaved viciously. It was quite a rare sight as your lover lay vulnerable before you, heart bared open.

Oh, he was an absolute mess.

Dark streams of teary mascara ran down Vil's cheeks, his uniform wrinkled and his golden hair splayed out everywhere—unbound from its braids and tangled up.

The grip of his arms around your midsection tightens as he pressed you up closer against him, his head resting atop your chest. At the sound of your heartbeat, Vil allowed himself to unwind and let your affections banish away even the most ominous of his thoughts.

"Liebling…Es tut mir ehrlich Leid—" Vil rasps, his mother tongue dripping like honey from his lips as he suddenly found it difficult to speak the language he was so accustomed to every day.

Hushing him, you press a fleeting kiss against his brow line and Vil clamps his red-rimmed eyes shut, ceasing to say anything more.

"Hush now. Rest, my prince." You press a gentle kiss to his temple and brush the frizzes of his blonde hair away from his face.

A small smile quirks on his lips as he feels his stomach fluttering from the nickname. The look in his eyes is softly lit, warm like a candle.

✩—MALLEUS DRACONIA:

One day, Malleus knows, you will be nothing more than wilted and withered ash.

It was a truth that wrapped around him like shackling chains—tearing, whipping and lashing against his raw, bare skin. No matter how hard he pulled, scratched, and screamed at it, the chains remained.

The clanging and grating iron truth about reality cannot be so easily pushed away. Human lives are fickle, and you would inevitably leave him.

Once you do, the fae prince knows he will be a mere shadow of his former self, a wretched and lonesome creature awaiting and longing for his lover who was no more than a ghost of his fleeting memories.

"I apologize for the disturbance, my treasure."

And yet, Malleus presses his hand firmly against your beating heart. A distant marching beat serving as his reminder that you were very much alive and well.

"I truly apologize." Malleus heaves, hands clamouring against your collarbone.

Although thick tension and silence still hung heavy in the air, the dragon basked in the warmth and feel of your flushed skin, a bitter smile gracing his lips as he lay beside you on the bed.

"Sweet dreams, beastie…"

—TAGLIST:

꒰ ♡🧷: if you want to be tagged for ALL of my works, comment here!

Sometimes you felt like you hardly knew what it meant to be a functional person, living a comfortable life on the fringes of society. So in comparison, trying to think of what it meant to be an actual prince, ruling over all of said society was something you literally could not comprehend no matter how hard you tried to wrap your head around it.  

“If you’re a Prince, what were you doing in a hole?” you asked, because you had far too many questions and concerns, and this one at least seemed easy enough to address. And also because you were genuinely pretty curious.  

The newly dubbed ‘Leona’ twitched against your back and you felt the low rumble of his snarl work its way from the depths of his gut all the way up through his chest and out his mouth.

“Holy shit,” Ace wheezed. “Screw this. I’m getting out of here before I wind up implicated as an accessory in your murder.”

And so your trusty friend abandoned you to the wolves lions?—darting away so quickly he always forget his bag, shoes, and everything else in the process.

You waved after him as he departed, knowing full well that he’d wind up stumbling back within the week, maybe two at most. He always did, no matter how much he complained about your Present Company. Plain old ‘murder’ was actually one of his more polite accusations. When he’d run into your Hunter friend the first time, Ace had gone on a wildly incoherent rant about how he was going to find your corpse strung up in a tree like some weird, ritual, sacrifice. And then that had devolved into something-something cannibalism or other. The visiting Hunter had just thrown his head back and laughed, positively enamored with the grisliness of it all. Ace had vanished for almost an entire month after that encounter, but he did come back—glaring up at you with a miserable pout like you were the one who’d gone and fucked off for thirty whole days.

Leona snorted and you felt the puff of breath against the back of your neck.

“Coward,” he grumbled, though he didn’t sound particularly displeased about your friend’s sudden departure.

“Fear lets us be brave,” you responded, wise as a sage. Or maybe an old frog in a puddle.

“Yeah?” he intoned, rolling his eyes. “And when’s that little rat ever been brave?”

“There’s always tomorrow,” you chirped, and that snort turned into something dangerously close to a chuckle. Which—gasp!—how dare such a pleasant sound fall from the lips of someone so obstinately determined to be otherwise! You grinned at the low tones of it, only for the snickering to cut off sharply in his throat once he’d realized what he was doing. And then of course he shoved you forward and out of his lap with a great amount of indignant snarling.

You laid there for a few minutes—face down in the sun-warmed grass and laughing quietly about just how ridiculous this stupid Lion was, before finally sitting up with a pleasant stretch. He could put on airs all he liked, you knew there was kernel of something far less angsty and murderous buried at the heart of him.

“So,” you hummed, lazily making your way back to your feet. “What exactly have I done to draw the realm’s Prince to my doorstep?” You squinted at him suspiciously. “You’re not here about the fairy gate thing, are you? Because that was actually an accident.”

“The what?” he frowned, brow pinched in confusion.

You waved him off. “Ah, nothing, nothing.”

Something in his jaw twitched, like now he was going to push the subject out of principle of you being shifty. But he just sighed and brought a hand up to pinch at the bridge of his nose.

“I need your help,” he said finally. Just as crabby as the first time he’d asked, if perhaps just a touch less imperious.

You arched a brow. “I think you’ve mentioned that already, yes.”

Silence.

The Lion stared you down with a slowly deepening scowl, and you stared back with a smile as placid and unmoved as the shallow pond you’d nearly drowned Ace in not an hour before.  

“If I apologize, you’ll help me?” he asked after a long moment, the question turning sharp at the end on a bitten of growl.

“That’s what I said, isn’t it?” you hummed back and he crossed his arms stubbornly over his chest.

“I’m sorry,” he said, with all the pleasantry of someone undergoing a root canal. And all the sincerity of Ace swearing that this was the last time he’d get caught evading the tax man, promise.

You sighed, feeling a bit cheated. But you hadn’t really stipulated anything beyond those two little words leaving his mouth, so if anything, that was on you.

“Alright,” you huffed. “What is it you need help with?”

The Lion glared at you suspiciously for a long moment—glowing eyes narrowed into slits and tail twitching back and forth like he was swatting flies. Finally, he sighed and lifted his hands out in front of him with a pointed flex.  

“It’s not supposed to be like this,” he frowned sourly, wrists twisting to display the pointed claws tipping his fingers. “I’m not supposed to get stuck in between.”

Your eyes traced the fluffy tufts of his round ears, the black-tipped tail swishing irritably at his hind, and allowed yourself a melancholy sort of huff.

“But you look good like this,” you pointed out sadly. Because he really, truly, did. Leona without his squishy lion ears would just be… grumpy. Miserable, and angular, and angry. Nothing soft worth coddling at all.

“That’s not the point!” he snapped, baring his overlarge canines at you. There was a darker cast along his cheekbones that seemed to be making a valiant effort to crawl all the way up into his fringe. “And don’t fucking say that!”

You frowned. One second this stupid dick wanted to be praised to the Heavens and back! Practically swanning about, demanding you bow down and acknowledge his blatant superiority. But, oh no. Apparently your meager half-sentence masquerading as a compliment was too much for his delicate, princely, sensibilities.

“Fine,” you griped. “You’re ugly.”

He growled—low and rumbling—and if he was anymore of a cat you’d say you could see his hackles raising in indignation. But before he could launch into another vicious, verbal, evisceration of your person, you cleared your throat loudly in an attempt to get him back on track.   

“What do you mean by ‘stuck in between?’”

He sneered down at you testily for a moment before reaching up to pinch at the bridge of his nose again and letting out a put-upon sort of sigh that was not at all indicative of the fact that he was the one asking you for help.

“The Shift. When you found me in that pit, I should have been able to Shift between that form and this one without issue,” he frowned, brow tugging down tight with something a bit more disquieted than his usual, flat, annoyance. “The iron was a problem, but once I was out of the trap, it should have been fine. I’ve dealt with cursed snares like this before, and the effects have never lingered as long as this one has.”

You blinked owlishly. That did sound… fairly unpleasant. And honestly, if you were in his position you’d also be at least a little concerned that something else was at play. But, still, all that being said—

“I’m sorry,” you frowned, more or less genuine. Perhaps leaning a bit harder into less.“But I don’t understand how that has anything to do with me.”

“You were down there with me,” he argued. “You dismantled the trap.”

Uh, yeah. By messing with bits that looked breakable until they broke. Not exactly a high-level intellectual pursuit.

You didn’t say that, of course. Because after a few days watching you scuttle about your homestead like a particularly vocal lizard in the dirt, you were sure he already thought you were stupid enough without you outright admitting to it. Nevertheless, the Lion observed your zip-lipped silence with an ever-deepening scowl.

“You took it apart,” he tried again, nearly a growl.

“Yes,” you said with a nod.

“You know how you did it,” he continued, firm. At your lack of affirmative, he pushed again. “You know. I watched you do it!”

You raised your hand nervously and made a little so-so tilting motion.

Anyone less refined would no doubt have had their head in their hands at this point, but Leona just curled his lip at you and looked like he was fighting valiantly not to put your own very silly head through a wall.

“It was charmed,” he spat. “Bound up with talismans, and cursed down to its very moldings. That isn’t something any random farmer could walk up and break.”

“Oh,” you blinked, taken aback, and struggled to recall if there had been anything so obviously enchanted about the trap you’d fiddled into bits. “Was it?”

And head had officially met hands. He ground his clawed fingers into his temples like you were a headache that with enough determination and massaging he may somehow be able to will away.

“Couldn’t you go just home if this is such a big problem?” you asked, still genuinely baffled at it all. “Get help from your family? I mean, you’re a Prin—”

“No,” he interrupted, emerald eyes gone glacier cold.

You frowned, as unimpressed by his prickliness as you usually were. But something in you was hesitant to prod at whatever it was that had managed to tug a feral rage so tightly across his face—like drawing a shade over a window until the entire home was cloaked in shadow, or slipping away behind a carved mask too heavy to ever wear comfortably. It was an expression so sharp and so bitter that if you hadn’t only just yesterday watched this stubborn man lounge about in the sun as your chickens hopped all over him like he was the world’s most carnivorous jungle gym, you wouldn’t ever have known that they could be the same person at all. 

“Alright,” you shrugged, and some of that angry, hunched, defensiveness eased into confusion.

“Hah?” he frowned.

“Alright,” you said again. “We’ll figure it out here.” He glared over at you balefully, and you waved off the obvious retort on the tip of his tongue about something-something-you have no idea what you’re doing-something-something-dangerous risks and lifelong consequences-blablabla. “I have a friend who would know a lot more about those kinds of traps and talismans that I do. He could help, probably.”

“Probably?” he scoffed. Though when he rolled his eyes, they weren’t quite so hate filled—lids hooded with a familiar, begrudging sort of irritation rather than outright malice.

“He’s a bit of an enigma,” you explained—wiggling your fingers in a little, sparkly, dance to emphasize the, well, enigmatic part.

Another huff. But amidst that grumpy bellyaching, you watched those fluffy ears of his slowly perk back up atop his head, and his tail swish leisurely behind him. The Lion certainly didn’t look happy (but did he ever? So was that really a fair comparison?), but he definitely seemed like he’d thawed into something less ‘frigid dead of winter’ and more ‘unpleasantly nippy spring morning.’

“Weirder than you, herbivore?” he sniffed, looking down his nose at you and crossing his arms loosely over his chest. “I find that hard to believe.”

Normally you would too. But, well…

“He’s charming,” you chirped pleasantly, and Leona’s face twisted up like you’d served him a bowl of rancid yogurt.

.

.

That night you composed a letter to your dearest Hunter friend. You thanked him for bringing you the White Moor Stag, elaborated a bit on the new marinade you’d been experimenting with, and then ended the whole thing with a polite plea for his aid in deconstructing the mechanisms of a magical trap you’d encountered. You bribed one of your two carrier pigeons with some snacks and watched it fly off into the unknown with a little, cream-colored envelope tied to its foot. Message talismans were much simpler and far more convenient, but the Hunter always seemed to appreciate the personal touch of postal birds.

Leona glared at you from the window, and made some dramatic swipe at your pigeon like he meant to knock it out of the air. The poor bird tottered about like an overfilled water balloon—jiggling and wriggling in its roundness before eventually righting itself and continuing on into the sky with a warbled coo coo.

“Don’t be rude,” you huffed at him.

“I can’t believe you still won’t let me in,” he sneered from beneath the fluff of that blanket you’d gifted him. “I apologized.”

“Yes, but you actually have to mean it,” you explained, not unkindly, as he prowled just beyond the glass. “But we’re making progress!” you beamed. “That’s something! Maybe you’ll make it in here within the next five years, hmm?”

“Or I could just wipe out the entirety of your ridiculous dirt farm now,” he threatened, a bit of that sandy magic swirling sinisterly along his fingers.

“You certainly could, your highness,” you agreed easily. His lip curled unpleasantly, but that glowing, gritty, arcana faded away and he didn’t move from where he’d tucked himself up under the duvet.

After another solid fifteen minutes of his pissy glowering and barbed insults, you pointedly unclipped the ties on your curtains and let them fall shut so that his ridiculous pouting was hidden away behind the thin, cotton, mess of poorly stitched flowers and herbs.

(You did leave a nice dinner plate on the ledge before that, with extra portions of meat and a neatly frosted cookie for dessert. Because as much as your day had been a bit rough, you had a feeling his melancholy extended far beyond being left out in the dark for another evening.)

.

.

The next morning, your doddering pigeon returned with an elegantly bound scroll—all embellished with golden filagree and tied up in a neat, crimson, bow.

“Why does this freak call you ‘mon cher ami,’” Leona sniffed, tongue curling awkwardly over the unfamiliar words.

You sighed and debated snatching the letter back, but all that would probably culminate in was the paper in tatters and a smug beastman lording his superior letter-wrangling skills over your head like a trophy.

“It’s just one of his little ticks,” you explained with a shrug. “I told you—he’s charming.”

“Ah, yes,” Leona drawled, tracing a claw along the parchment’s edge with a soft shhhhhft. A raised, white, line cut across the paper’s surface like the beginnings of a wound. “Waxing poetic nonsense in a foreign language. Rambling on about all kinds of useless fucking garbage. Charming.”

“You,” you snipped, reaching out to smack at his tightening grip before he could rend the poor correspondence to bits, “are not one to talk about ‘charming.’”

“Oh?” he scoffed. He maneuvered around your tutting to hold the letter over your head. Typical. When you leaned forward to try and wrangle it back, Leona leaned in closer—eyes going hooded and lips curling into a smug little smirk that promised all sorts of trouble. “Haven’t had any complaints about that before. Who’d be saying otherwise?”

“The person you left stranded at the bottom of a pit, you inglorious oaf,” you griped. His ears immediately swiveled to pin flat against the top of his head, and you used the distraction of his indignation to finally snatch back your prize. “Besides,” you huffed, straightening out some of the new wrinkles. “Not very Prince-like, is it? A real prince would have swept in to save the idiot in distress. Sword drawn, banners flying,” you sighed, a bit too besotted with your own imaginings. “Why did you have to be such a dick, huh? Ruined my fantasies for the rest of my life.”

“And what?” Leona snapped. “Some rogue bastard sending you cursive garbage does it for you?”

“Better than being left for dead in a hole after saving their life,” you smiled—perfectly, poisonously, pleasant.

Leona rumbled something indiscernible under his breath and turned to glare petulantly off across your garden.

“Besides,” you hummed, looking over the letter. “There’s more important things. Like this—right here. Do you know what a self-bored stone is? He’s thinking maybe there was a process like that with the iron shackles. Or maybe something to do with seeping the components in herbs… Hmm…”

“Whatever,” Leona scoffed. “I’ll try whatever it takes to fix this shit.”

You clapped him amiably on the shoulder. “That’s the spirit, tête de noeud!”

“The fuck did you just call me?!”

“Poetic nonsense,” you chirped, and Leona looked half ready to drop you back into the hole where he’d found you.

.

.

The first attempt to aid the Lion Prince in his conundrum didn’t go particularly well.

You’d tried to work off of the whole ‘overlap with a self-bored stone’ theory, but all that really amounted to was you gesturing like an over-serious crossing guard for him to walk under every low hanging branch, every arch, beneath the stunted beams of the chicken coop. You dangled rocks from strings and waved around your little creations like slightly more dangerous pompoms.

Penelope clucked irritably when one of the pebbles fell with a plunk into her nest, and Leona frowned up at you from where the wayward chicken had firmly situated herself in his lap.

“How was any of that supposed to help?”

You drew a blank and promised to try something new tomorrow.

The next day you tried herbs. The Hunter had listed off quite a few that were known to cause lingering issues with magical creatures, and you harvested the lot of them from your garden with ease. You held them up to Leona’s face one by one, brow furrowed in concentration, as you waited for… something.

“How is this any better than the rocks?” he complained.

You pushed the bright, butter-yellow, blossoms of some Saint John’s Wort under his nose until he sneezed and shoved you away with a slew of indignant threats to your person.

The following few days were spent perusing your meager library. You carted every book you owned on magic, and binding rituals, and rune smithing out into the yard. Leona looked over at the slowly growing pile of tomes with a truly unimpressed scowl.

“You could have just invited me inside,” he griped, rolling his eyes. He was splayed out in the grass at your side, his head tossed lazily across your lap after he’d complained that he needed at least some leverage to see what you were trying to read.

“Nice try,” you hummed, reaching for your page of hastily scribbled notes. “But you’re not getting off without a genuine apology that easy.”

A week passed in this fashion, with you attempting to string together more and more ludicrous ideas—throwing everything you had at the wall and hoping something, anything, would stick. But Leona’s ears stayed tufted and round. That tail seemed to only grow more twitchy, his claws longer and sharper.

You sent the Hunter another letter and waited anxiously for a reply. When it arrived the next morning, Leona snatched it from your pigeon before you’d even made it out your front door. It was a miserable sort of day—pouring rain and with nothing but the grey cloud cover overhead to color the world.

He read it over once, twice, before dropping it to the ground. You could see the tendons twitching along his jaw, could practically hear his molars grinding in his frustration.

You plucked the note from the grass and looked it over carefully.  

‘Mon ami, while I am loathe to address this, perhaps it is not the make of this trap at all that is causing such a vexation? Is there any chance that rather than this being a lingering malady, that this friend of yours was simply unable to overcome the initial curse in the first place?’

You glanced back up at Leona, who was intermittently clenching his fists at his sides. You could see the harsh indentations from where his claws were digging into the skin of his palms.

‘Sometimes such things just happen, je crains. The flesh may be willing, but often the spirit is weak. You mentioned this Roi du Leon has a powerful family he may turn to for assistance. Certainly one of them may be strong enough to overcome this curse for him, even if he perhaps is not.’

“Of course it’s all because I’m a fuck up,” Leona snarled. Some of that spitting, sandy, magic of his seeped into the air. It bit at the rain like an overeager dog. You could see it dancing along his skin—fighting to pull his features one way or another.

“He didn’t say that,” you pointed out gently. “And even if you were, there’s nothing wrong with needing help sometimes. Your family—"

“—Would rather I keeled over dead and stopped sullying my brother’s perfect fucking reputation!” he snapped. “Heir to the King’s Roar,” he scoffed. “Stupid. I was never going to be a king to begin with. And even if I had been born first, they would have deposed me to put their flawless, favorite, golden boy on the throne anyways.”

That... That was a lot. You stared at the pacing Lion with wide eyes—unsure how to help, unsure if any attempts to do so would only make this worse. This was—this was so above your ‘happy, homey, hermit’ paygrade.

“Of course this is all because of me,” he hissed, that roiling, angry, arcana coiling around him like curdled milk. The pupils in his eyes flickered oddly from round to thin-cut, hard, lines. Beastly. “Of course it was because I wasn’t good enough.”

“Leona,” you tried, as gentle as you could be.

The Prince threw his head back and laughed. And laughed, and laughed.

“I should have known!” he cackled, borderline hysterical. “I should have fucking known!”

“Leona—” you tried again, reaching out a hand.

Only to be immediately knocked on your ass by an explosion of magic.

You’d heard of self-destruction—of implosion. The arcane wonders of the world were a wily and unyielding mistress. While creatures like Leona who were so naturally steeped in ancient magics and sorcery could control that beast more adeptly than some little mortal like you, it didn’t make them any less susceptible to its dangers. If anything, they had it worse. It was like sitting in a shallow stream versus wading out into a roaring ocean. So much more opportunity, such a higher aptitude for greatness, but far too easy to drown beneath the churning tides of it all.

The inky, geometric, swirls along his arms pulsed like a heartbeat. They crawled along his skin and traced black patterns into his veins. Even you could feel the horrible, dark, stickiness of it—as the magic ate him alive. His face twisted back and forth between human and animal, and you watched him contort and snarl under the weight of it before turning on you with a vicious roar.

Uh oh.

The first wave of magic seared the ground, leaving nothing but strange, grey, sand in its wake. The more he snapped and clawed wildly at anything and everything, the more that dusty desert spread. You managed to hop out of the way of most of it—sparing a single, sad, thought for all the poor plants you’d worked so hard to cultivate dying a miserable, grainy, death.

The next arc of magic shot straight from his clawed fingers, and it managed to catch the flesh of your forearm. It was sharper than any dagger or sword that you’d ever had the pleasure of accidentally nicking yourself with, and it tore its way down your arm like a raging beast, leaving an eerie, tacky, bubbling mess in its wake. And ouch did it hurt—like someone was taking a fistful of coarse sand and rubbing it into the open wound. You ground your teeth against the strange, gnawing, sensation and hastily wrapped a bit of torn fabric around the weeping gash to keep it a bit more contained. You waited for the worst of it to pass, for that initial bite to fade into a more manageable throb. But it didn’t. It just got sharper and tighter, hotter and hotter. For a moment it felt like your skin was crackling—like firewood popping and splitting beneath the weight of a blaze. From across the field, Leona made a noise like a hurricane given voice, and you bit back a groan.

‘Oh come on,’ you hissed to yourself. ‘Not now, please.’  

And while you’d been mostly referring to the Lion losing another brick of his sanity fort, your wound seemed to pulse at the command—a sensation not unlike the soft drone of the wards carved deep into the support beams of your dilapidated home, and an impression of words tingling along your nerves without any real shape or form. ‘Alright. Later then.’ Like a breath of wind along your fingertips. That pulsing doubled back, and the wrap you’d hurriedly tied around your forearm hummed low with gentle arcana.   

And then the cracking stopped. Just like that. Like it’d given up on eating you alive and decided to head home early for the day.

Huh, you though a bit dazedly, before hurriedly ducking out of the way of another swipe.

You clutched your still smarting but at least now functional arm to your chest, and Leona turned on you and your ethereal booboo with a raging snarl. But then that glowing glare caught on the blood trailing down towards your wrist in too dark, too thick, rivulets and his eyes went wide. It wasn’t much, but the strange bought of shock rocketing through him gave you a handful of seconds of ceasefire. You reached into your pocket with your uninjured hand and pulled out a thick bit of cardstock. This was supposed to be for emergencies, goddamn it! And you’d spent so much money on this stupid little thing! And—

You shook off the mildly delusional complaints bogging down your brain and unfolded the paper between your fingers. The sigils inked into it hummed against your skin, and the rain sluffed off its face like the cold and the damp were no bother at all.

“Fucking—” you flung the talisman at your ridiculous, rampaging, guest. It fluttered like the beat of a hawk’s wings and dove towards him with just as much vicious precision. “GO TO SLEEP!”

The enchantment smacked into his face with an echoing THUNK and you watched those too-bright eyes of his roll up into his head as he collapsed to the ground in a heap.

With the main source of all the Magical Warfare knocked unconscious, most of the miasma began to disperse—like dust caught up in a gale. The rain washed away the rest. It slid into the mud and seeped back into the earth. The plants and animals seemed to give a collective sigh, and some of your more courageous chickens even started to venture in close to peck at the leftover destruction.

You approached the felled Prince hesitantly. The talisman had been meant for subduing an enemy with a more human constitution, so you doubted it would keep him down for very long.

“Hey,” you grouched, poking his side. He twitched a bit but didn’t move otherwise. “Hey, asshole,” you tried again. Still, nothing. Uh oh.

You reached down to wedge an arm under him and hoist him upright. The singed skin of your forearm brushed along his jaw as you attempted to maneuver his bulk, and his nose twitched sharply at whatever scent was trapped in the dark, cracking, gash there. His brow scrunched up like you’d just doused him in spoiled milk, so naturally you went about waving your wounded flesh beneath his nostrils like the world’s strangest smelling salts.

After a moment he blinked back awake, face twisted up into the most properly disgruntled mien of distaste that you’d ever seen on a person who’d only just barely managed to claw their way back into the world of the living.

“Herbivore,” he rumbled, still looking more than a bit dazed.

Good enough.

You manhandled him back onto his feet as best you could—turning yourself into an impromptu crutch to try and get him mobile again. The sand shifted and sank beneath your heels, making dragging his ridiculous, dramatic, ass even more of a challenge. As you hauled him towards your cottage, you complained to him in earnest. Every little irritation under the sun. Half because you’d probably never have another opportunity to bitch at him so thoroughly without getting your own earful of grievances in return, half to keep him conscious—keep him focused on staying here. With you. And not… Wherever it was he’d gone in those moments of delirium.  

“I still don’t get why you call me that,” you griped, readjusting your grip on him when he’d started to slide down to the point his nose had buried itself against your collarbone. “Herbivore. I’ve cooked so much meat for you since you decided to crash here. Talked about how I prepare it, and the flavors I experiment with—I literally gave you some from my own sandwich when we first met! That I ate the rest of! In front of you!—”

When you finally herded him over the threshold and into your little cottage, the wards and their protection slipped around him like the soft current of a stream. You hardly even noticed the way the old magics ruffled his hair—and that was only because you were actively looking, half convinced the house was still about to toss up an invisible barrier and send him sprawling back into the dirt.

Leona wobbled on his feet, and his eyes were still too far away and grey.

You grabbed him by the ear and maneuvered his too-tall self into one of your rickety kitchen chairs. The wood groaned under the sudden press of his dead weight, but it didn’t collapse beneath him so it wasn’t worth fussing over. Once you were certain he wasn’t about to fold over sideways and crumple to the ground (or at least, that he was angled enough over a rug that he wasn’t going to crack his head on the stone floor), you rushed off to your bookcases and shelves and began hurriedly rumaging through your collection of nonsense.

The charms, the charms. Where were your emergency charms?! You’d thought you left them right there on the—Ah! There we go.

You pulled the raggedy binder from its place on the shelf, blew away the coating of dust that had settled over the top of it, and returned to your patient.

You flipped open the worn leather hooks and began sorting through the dozens upon dozens of sheets of enchanted parchment within. They were unimpressive—just small, rectangular, bits of faded paper inlaid with the softest kinds of magic. Not meant for much more than coaxing warmth into chilly limbs or placing a soft kiss over a scraped knee. But medicines were medicines—whether arcane in origin or otherwise. If you—if you just doused him in the things, that would probably work. Right? Of course it would. That made perfect sense.

So you slapped the first talisman square in the middle of his forehead. Leona swayed at the wet SMACK of the paper gluing itself to his soaked-through skin, but aside from the faintest, startled, widening of his eyes, he didn’t do anything else to complain. So you stuck the next charm to his cheek, and then another on the opposite one too.

“Magic overuse is dangerous,” you chastised as you went about layering a veritable novel’s worth of pasty, paper, enchantments up his arms. The soft spells worked their way into his skin, and you watched those twisting, black, shapes skitter back up towards where they’d once sat peacefully curled around his bicep. “Are you trying to kill yourself, hah?!”

Instead of snapping back at you like normal, he just sort of… sat there. Accepting your angry accusations in frosty silence. He absolutely looked like a cat that you’d fished out of a bag in the river. Pathetic, and sad, and droopy. And… quiet. So, very, quiet. You frowned, because as much as you didn’t particularly enjoy being insulted every minute of the day, the Lion’s biting little remarks had become… familiar, at the very least. Even if they weren’t entirely pleasant. Even if he was far from pleasant.

The dampness on his skin was starting to curl the edges of your talismans, and you reached forward with a huff to at least pull the freezing, soaked-through, vest off his shoulders. The leather jacket landed with a wet plap on the stone floor, a cold puddle already pooling around all its stupidly intricate, embroidered, edges. Something fluttered out of one of the open pockets—small, and off white, and crinkled. You stepped over the whole mess to retrieve a pile of towels and didn’t give it a second thought.

“Make a mess of my home, why don’t you,” you complained, dropping one of the towels over the entirety of his head before reaching forward to start drying him off with perhaps a bit more force than necessary. “Drip all over the floors I just mopped, why don’t you. Be emotionally constipated and almost turn my whole yard into a sand pit, why don’t you—”

A hand reached out to snag your wrist, and you let him pull you away from your attempts to rub all that stupidly thick hair straight off his head.

From beneath the curtain of the cotton towel, you could see Leona glaring at the long, dark, scratch curling along your forearm. It certainly wasn’t… nice to look at. The gymnastics of getting him into your cottage had managed to displace the impromptu bandage, so the whole of it was just there. Bruised, and dark, and odd looking. But ugly or not, it was hardly bleeding or anything anymore! And he was the one who had almost just self-destructed in your front yard!

‘Think of the accusations!’ you wanted to wail. ‘Can you imagine the garbage I would have to deal with if I wound up with a dead royal fertilizing my garden?! No thank you!’

But before you could complain about his fussing, his claws flexed against the soft skin of your palm and you saw the muscles along his forearm tense—like he was fighting to keep still.

“You should be dead,” he muttered, terse.

You huffed. “Look, I know you think humans are all sorts of pathetic, but I’m not that—”

“You should be dead,” he repeated, sounding as if the words had to tear their way out of his throat—scraping like shards of glass all the way up.

You stared at his dark eyes and dripping bangs—the shadows playing across his cheeks and the strange, hollow, wrongness that had settled over all of him. With a heavy sigh you plopped yourself down into the chair across from his and dragged a handful of the leftover charms your way. Pointedly, you took one and slapped it over the wound. And then another.  

“See?” you said, flexing your wrist in his grip to put the creeping, black, cut on display. The talismans glowed softly against your skin and the lingering whisps of darkness licking at the the injury began to fade. “All better. Not something a dead person would say at all.”

Leona frowned, but at least it looked a bit more annoyed than outright bleak. And besides, frowns were better than whatever that stoic, expressionless, numbness had been.

“Though I appreciate your concern,” you grinned, pointedly sharp and prodding. Like a toddler standing by with a stick, hoping to poke out a reaction. “Truly, whatever would I do without the Great Lord Lion there to fret over me?”

But instead of the acidic ‘I wasn’t fucking worried,’ that you were expecting, or even a more muted grumble of dissent, Leona’s brow just pinched in displeasure and your awkward attempts at teasing faded into terse silence.

“I’m sorry,” he muttered, almost too quiet to hear—his head low and eyes lower.

You sighed and twisted your wrist around to pat at his hand. There was the faintest tremor in his fingers and you tangled your own between them to give him something to squeeze, something to hide the shiver of lingering malaise that he would no doubt deny with his dying breath. You observed the stern, tight, expression warping his otherwise handsome face—the miserable, puckered, angle of his mouth and the way the emerald of his eyes was cut through with a shadow of genuine remorse. You reached out with your other hand to pet at his soft, round ears. They squished flat beneath your palm and your lips twitched up into a fond, little smile. Leona tipped his chin just enough to glower at you from beneath his bangs with no real heat, and you sighed and gave him one more pat for good measure.

“You’re forgiven.”

.

.

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TAG LIST [CLOSED]

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You hesitated, remembering the way the city had been covered in crimson flowers in October. Your friend, as well as everyone else at Noble Bell College, had no idea what truly happened that night. Who was behind the shock and chaos caused by the plant that had been thought to be extinct for hundreds of years. You hadn’t really talked to Rollo ever since. You didn’t even know what the two of you were. Officially, you hated each other. You had, as one would call it, a rivalry of sorts. Always bantering, always driving each other up the wall. He was driving you insane, in more ways than one. 

There was Rollo, who would point out mistakes in your essays and presentations just to get a reaction out of you. The student body president who made sure he always was at the top of his class; having no problem throwing you under the bus in class to show off. The person who always had a condescending counter-argument ready whenever you expressed your perspective on anything. But if you were to be honest, he hadn’t done these things in quite a while. Most of what he said towards you now were dry remarks you knew were supposed to tease you. And statements that sounded less mean-spirited and more like he was deeply in denial about something. Just like me, you thought but pushed that thought down just as quickly as it came.

And then there was that version of Rollo that made your heart flutter. The Rollo who had given you a small necklace with a purple liquid and stars inside it; mirroring the silk scarf a friend of the kind bellringer was said to have as she captivated the people of the city with her beautiful dancing. He had argued that he had won it at the Topsy Turvy festival and saw no use for it. You would have believed him if it hadn’t been for the blush on his cheeks when he gave it to you.

There was also the dance the two of you had shared at the masquerade ball. Despite everything, Rollo had managed to make you smile that evening. Although his facial expression looked shameful and you had the feeling he couldn’t look you in the eyes that night. 

There were all the times the two of you, despite your “hatred” for one another, had walked to your classes together and talked about whatever came to mind. Although his words hardly spoke for it, you knew in a way he was looking out for you as you did for him. You’d be lying if you were to say that you hadn’t gazed up to the night sky from your bedroom window during the holidays and wondered whether he was thinking of you even slightly as much as you thought about him. 

“I’m not sure what you’re implying”, you finally answered your friend, visibly flustered, “it’s not like I have a crush on him or something.” “Sure…”, they raised their eyebrows in doubt as the wind blew a little harder and you clutched the jacket you were wearing tighter, “that’s his jacket, isn’t it?” You avoided their gaze, clearly pouting. “Listen-”, you protested, “our class teacher sent us out to pick up potion ingredients for the school from the city; it was really cold and he gave it to me because I, and I quote, ‘wouldn’t stop making a fuss about it’. That’s all. It just happens to be very comfortable. He’s not getting it back if he doesn’t ask.” You smirked and your friend laughed. “I don’t even think he wants it back”, they giggled, “like, have you seen the way he looks at you when you wear it? Like he’s one smile away from going down on one knee and promising you his eternal and undying love.” You grimaced and the two of you continued your walk. “I would appreciate it if we could drop the recurring scenarios of me marrying Rollo Flamm”, you said and your friend just sighed, mumbling something about ‘denial’ and ‘stubbornness’. 

You walked for a while before eventually hearing a beautiful piano tune. It perfectly matched the evening atmosphere of the City of Flowers and it seemed so full of emotion and passion, that you couldn’t help but want to stay for a while. The song was coming from a narrow alleyway and you grabbed your friend by the arm, dragging them towards the melody. You entered a small courtyard that seemed to belong to a restaurant, as its backdoor was the only other way to access the place aside from the alleyway you and your friend had entered through. The courtyard was decorated by so many lights being spun from tree to tree. There was a small marble stage in the middle of it; solely meant for the grand piano and the musicians who came and went to play on it. And at the piano was sitting none other than Rollo Flamm, playing the beautiful song you were so enchanted by. You had to admit he looked quite handsome, being dressed in a turtleneck shirt, a long winter coat and a cozy scarf wrapped around his neck. The people sitting outside of the restaurant were watching him play just as you and your friend were.

“Speak of the devil”, your friend took a sip from the coffee they had gotten themselves, “your boyfriend’s good though.” “He’s NOT my boyfriend”, you hissed and shook your head in disappointment. But they were right, he was good. You didn’t even know he could play.

“Anyway”, your friend patted your back with a mischievous grin on your face, “I just remembered I still have somewhere to be this evening. You should have a good time with piano boy over there.” They winked and were about to leave as you held them back by their coat. “Let me come with you”, you plead. “To drive my grandma with dementia to her foot waxing appointment?”, they raised an eyebrow. “You’re making this up”, you gestured wildly as they pushed you a step closer to Rollo with a chuckle. Just as you were about to continue arguing, your eyes locked with his as he was close to finishing his piano piece. You just looked at each other for a while before you attempted to turn around to your friend again, only to notice they were long gone.

Rollo finished playing his song and then stood up to walk over to you. Oh no, not good…, you thought. “Y/n”, he acknowledged you with a nod, “what are you doing here? Don’t you have someone to entertain with your little magic tricks?” You rolled your eyes. “Charming as ever”, you hissed under your breath and Rollo covered his angry expression halfway by putting his handkerchief over his mouth. “What were you expecting?”, he let out a bitter laugh, “flowers and chocolate?” 

“Rollo…”, you began, left a dramatic pause and then spoke very slowly but clearly, “you of all people should know that I’ve had it with flowers for a while.”

He didn’t answer for a while so you took the initiative to speak again. “I didn’t know you could play an instrument”, you remarked. Rollo shrugged. “Who do you think plays that organ at school all the time?” “That’s you? I loved listening to that”, you exclaimed excitedly, then remembered just who exactly you were talking to and tried to cover it up, “though I’m not sure I still will from now on.” “Well that sounds like a you problem”, he spat back. You regretted your words when he seemed genuinely hurt and didn’t look into your eyes anymore. “I liked the song you just played”, you said quietly, causing him to look up to you again, “it was beautiful.” “Thanks, I guess”, he mumbled with a flushed face.

An awkward silence fell between the two of you, neither of you was quite sure on how to proceed and the longer you remained silent, the weirder the situation got. One of the men sharing a dinner with his family at the restaurant had noticed the tense atmosphere between you and got up to play another song at the piano. Rollo still remained silent for a moment before he spoke, simply listening to the man playing the piano. 

“Would you like to dance?”, Rollo asked quietly. His question caught you off guard. “What?” “I said ‘Would you like to dance?’; goodness y/n, are you deaf?”, he blushed furiously as you grabbed his hand and wrapped an arm around his waist, beginning to dance with him. “This takes me back”, you reminisced, “reminds me of the masquerade ball. That could have been such a nice evening if you hadn’t decided to put the whole town in a state of shock and terror the day prior.” “Tsk”, Rollo pulled you closer and rested his head against yours so you couldn’t see his facial expression and so that only you could hear him when he whispered. “I can’t believe you decided to team up with with those annoying Night Raven College students.”

“Well, I witnessed the whole fiasco and thought to myself ‘I am going to drag this man down from that belltower and knock some sense into him and if I have to do it as a magicless pedestrian’”, you chuckled and Rollo closed his eyes, remembering the dance you shared at the masquerade ball and how intimate it felt emotionally despite how angry you two were at each other. “To be honest, you only made me confused”, he whispered back. “Likewise”, you sighed, admittedly, “so…what’s with this place? It’s pretty secluded.”

Rollo hesitated for a moment. “My brother and I used to sneak out of the house as kids a lot and we’d end up here at night. We came here a lot. He loved to dance, even as a little child, so I’d often play the piano for him while he danced when no one else was around”, Rollo smiled fondly, a tear running down his cheek, “though, I have to admit, I didn’t have as much of an idea what I was doing as I do now.” He let out a quiet laugh as he remembered how many mistakes he had made, playing the piano as a kid. But his brother had loved it anyway. 

You looked at him with a surprised expression, your eyes meeting his again. “You have a nice laugh”, you confessed before you could think about it, “you should laugh more often.” Rollo would have taken your statement as teasing if it hadn’t been for the genuine tone in your voice; making him hope that you simply wanted to see him happy. You continued dancing in silence for a while. Your eyes wandered to Rollo’s lips, as did his to yours. You leaned in closer, waiting for him to make a move. Your suspicions were proven correctly when Rollo leaned closer as well. “Can I-”, you whispered but Rollo interrupted you. “Goddammit y/n, just kiss me already”, he hissed and your lips met his own. Unlike his words, the kiss was gentle. Your lips plucked at his lower lip lightly and you could hear his breath shaking before he leaned in once more, giving you a quick taste of his tongue before pulling back again. He was blushing but a smile tugged at the corners of his mouth. 

Riddle is a light sleeper so it’s unlikely he won’t immediately notice your tossing and turning

After several minutes of sitting awake, waiting for you to settle down, he realizes something is wrong

He quickly gets up and turns on a light 

Your skin is pale and sweat drips from your brow

Murmurs about something unintelligible escape from your mouth

Riddle quickly comes to the conclusion that you are having a nightmare 

Gently but quickly he wakes you and you shoot up in bed, tangling yourself in the sheets

He eases you and untangles your legs before climbing in next to you

He holds you as you sob and shushes you quietly while pressing chaste kisses to your forehead

Soon you’ve calmed and he walks you to the kitchen so he can make you some tea

“Riddle? Aren’t there rules about being up after a certain time?”

He hands you your tea and sits next to you 

“Sometimes you just have to break the rules. And for you? I’d break them all.”

Leona sleeps right through all of your disruption and squirming

It isn’t until his own dreams turn to you crying quietly that he slowly wakes in anxiety

He rapidly realizes he wasn’t completely dreaming

Your soft sobs tell him that you have been awake and crying for awhile but didn’t want to wake him by being loud

He wants to punch himself for sleeping soundly when you were having a hard time

Quietly, he wraps his arms around you and his tail strokes your lower thigh in comfort

“Was it a nightmare?” 

You nod and he sighs, pressing a kiss into your hair

Leona mutters to you for the next half hour about how you are safe and loved

When silence finally falls he doesn’t try to go back to sleep until he’s sure you are ok

He won’t prompt you to tell him what it was about but if you wanted, he would listen all night if he had too

“I’m so sorry Herbivore. Next time promise me you will wake me. I want to be there to dry your tears.”

Azul sits up the instant he feels like something is wrong

He often cuddles you as strongly as an octopus usually does so he’s quick to notice you trying to pull out of his arms desperately

Are you too hot? Too cold? He can’t figure out what’s wrong and it bothers him a lot

Regardless he shakes you awake and holds your trembling form as you sob into his shoulders

He texts Jade briefly, knowing the eel-man would have his phone on, and requests some hot chocolate be brought up immediately 

When you are finally settled down, Azul wraps you in his softest blanket and places a warm mug in your hands, warning you that it’s hot

Your breathing softens a bit and even after the sugary drink you’ve just had, your eyes droop

Azul whispers reassurances into your skin as he coaxes you to lie down again, still swathed in the fluffy blanket

His kind words don’t stop until long after you fall asleep 

He runs his fingers through your hair, gentle not to wake you again

How could someone so sweet be plagued with dreams so painful? 

Kalim notices you are distressed before you even start tossing and turning

He’s a light sleeper so he hears your whimpers and small noises of distress and wakes up right away

For a moment he isn’t sure what do do

Have you been poisoned? Are you hurt? Did someone do something to you?

Finally he calms down a bit after coming to the conclusion that you are in fact safe and just having a nightmare

Tentatively he wakes you and pulls you into a hug

With one hand he strokes your hair and whispers reassurance to you while he texts Jamil with the other hand to bring some sleepytime tea

“If you want to talk about it just let me know. If you need space or a bath or anything else…” 

You cut him off with a quick kiss and smile at him through your tears

“Just hold me Kalim.”

He’d rather do nothing else than keep you swathed in blankets for cuddles and kisses

Jamil leaves the tea outside the room and Kalim briefly detaches from you to grab it

After sipping at your tea for a while your eyelids droop and Kalim tucks you back in with a peck to the forehead.

“I’m always here, my love.”

Vil is a surprisingly deep sleeper and doesn’t notice you waking up and sliding gently out of bed

You pad out of the room and sit in the hallway for a moment to clear your head without disturbing your boyfriend

You know how much he needs his beauty sleep after a long day of being gorgeous and badass

Unfortunately that meant you were left to sit in the hall by yourself and cry quietly into your arms

What you didn’t plan on was how tired you would be after the crying stopped

You must have fallen asleep in the hallway because you woke to Vil rocking you gently

“Sweet potato? Are you alright? Did you decide the floor would be better than an airfoam mattress with egyptian silk sheets?” 

He quirked an eyebrow at you but frowned again when you didn’t smile back

“Why are you out here?” he asks

You hesitate before telling him about the nightmare and his eyes light up with concern

He gathers you into his arms and brings you back into the bedroom

“It’s a good thing I haven’t done my makeup yet or it would smudge on the pillowcase.”

He lies down next to you on the bed and kisses you gently on the lips

“Next time, Sweet Potato, wake me. I do not mind losing sleep over the one I love.”

You and Idia rarely sleep in the same bed together

Not because you don’t like it, you just both have very different sleep schedules

Idia is almost always up all night playing his games while you doze off under his covers

Tonight was no different

Except that when Idia pulled off his headset for a quick break, he noticed you were making some distressed noises

As a first class introvert, Idia has absolutely no idea what to do and immediately looks up online ‘how 2 comfort sleeping gf w/ nightmare?’

All of the results are pretty similar and all of them make him extremely nervous but it’s you and he loves you so he will suffer through

Not that comforting you is a suffer but the anxiety that he might mess up and do something wrong

Hesitantly he makes his way over to the bed and shakes you very gently

You don’t wake up at first so he whispers your name a few times and finally you wake up

You are very glad he has fire hair because the worst thing about waking up after a nightmare is waking up in total darkness

But here he is, your knight in flaming armor, lighting up the darkness, his hair like a halo around him as he gazes at you nervously with concern

You pull Idia into bed with you and sigh into his chest

Eventually he starts to relax and asks you if you’re ok

“I am now that you are here.”

Malleus has never felt so guilty in his entire long fae life

You are tossing fitfully and shivering beneath the sheets of his bed, making small panicked noises

He can hear your uneven breathing and rapid heartbeat as clear as if someone was playing the drums

He had been on a walk when it started and it was impossible for him to know how long it had been since the nightmare began

When he had returned, Malleus instantly panicked

What was happening to you? Were you hurt? Could he even heal your fragile human body? 

His magic quickly roamed your body and he learned there was no outer physical injury but he was only slightly relieved

Once he realized it was just a nightmare he finally calmed down a bit

Malleus decided not to wake you from your sleep since you had already lost so much of it

His hand rested over your forehead and he watched as the soft green glow eased your brain and nerves

Your body relaxed and your breathing evened out

He still waited until your heartbeat slowed to a steady, healthy pace before relaxing himself