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cloudedgalaxies · 3 days

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Three Nights Remain

Leona Kingscholar loves sleep more than anything else in Twisted Wonderland. So he is determined to continue sleeping all through the night when he has to host two freshmen crashing in his dorm for taking a rather stupid deal he had nothing to do with. It wasn't his problem.

Yet for some absurd reason, the three nights that the prefect stays in Savanaclaw, he doesn't get a wink.

Second Choice, Last Place

(part one) (part two) (part three) (read on AO3)

Word count: 4.5k

The moment Leona saw one of his freshmen bringing the herbivore and the weasel into his dorm, he knew that it was going to be trouble for him. He tried to avoid it as much as he could. Anything that didn’t involve him wasn’t his business, and wasn’t about to become his when it meant more work added to his plate he kept purposefully empty.

But here he was, watching his dorm get humbled by that very same freshman and strange package deal, where one wasn’t anything more than a pipsqueak and the other didn’t have a drop of magic in him. Here he was, finding that strangely enough, the person he thought would be dead last in a fight seemed oddly good at throwing down when the need arose.

Here he was, in his room, with two extra freeloaders on his couch that were much too loud and much too foolish for his taste, if they had gotten into a situation dire enough that forced them to stay here of all places. “Thank you again for letting us stay here,” the prefect said, as he made sure for the umpteenth time that his and Grim’s bags weren’t taking up any more space than they had to like a good little student.

Leona just hummed, making himself comfortable on his bed. “Don’t make me regret it.” Out of all the reactions that could have gotten out of him, the herbivore laughed. It made Leona crack open an eye to peer at him. “What’s so funny?”

“Nothing.” Yuu sighed as he shrugged out of his uniform jacket, still trying to be as unimposing as possible as he draped it over his bag. “Usually I’m the one regretting things. Like this deal, for example.”

“Getting cold feet now?” Leona taunted, almost more a leer than a real question. He couldn’t help but smirk just a little. “You made your bed, herbivore. Now you gotta lay in it.”

Yuu huffed lightheartedly, the faintest hint of a smile etched on his lips. “Grim’s already taken care of that, I’m afraid.” He looked down at where the thing was already conked out, spread out on enough of the couch that it’d be a pain for the freshman to fit, too. Maybe that was the reason why he sighed, glancing down at bare wrists revealed by scrunched-up sleeves. “You wouldn’t happen to have a first-aid kit, would you?” he asked, that smile turning into something of a frown.

Another hum, as Leona eyed him through the slit he had to see through. “Didn’t know the herbivore was so easy to knock around.” He didn’t look all that beat up, but Leona could smell the tang of metallic blood in the air. Somewhere, skin had been broken. Wherever it was, he did a good job of hiding it, he’d give him that.

Maybe Leona was being a little mean. Something in him paused when the prefect’s eyes flickered, a dimmer thing flashing in them. “Didn’t know the lion took such pride in playing with his prey,” he shot back, making Leona’s second eye open as his eyebrow raised. “What a catch I am. ‘Doe-eyed and dimwitted,’ I think you put it. You must be flaunting me to everyone who’d listen as your best hunt.”

So the herbivore still had guts, even after facing beastmen full of snarling teeth and crackling spells. Leona smirked this time, tail flicking from where it was next to him. “Finally decided to drop that little act of respect, huh?”

Yuu grinned back, something twisted and dark and just evil enough to make Leona wonder if this frosh was really as out of place in this school as he originally thought. “Not at all.”

Doe-eyed, dimwitted and cheeky, he mentally added, a little more amused than he should’ve been to find out that the prefect had claws beyond just physical fights. “If I got anything, it’d be in the bathroom,” Leona finally said, trusting he wasn’t blind enough not to miss the door.

“Thank you very much, Housewarden Kingscholar.” He almost didn’t let the laugh that got out of him be anything more than another hum, but it did when Yuu somehow schooled his features to look as prim and proper as physically possible. He didn’t know how to feel about it. He could be asleep and yet here he was, laughing at some forgettable freshman’s joke.

Leona decided he’d sleep now, letting his eyes shut again. It wasn’t his problem that he had been foolish enough to make a contract with the cephalo-punk, and it wasn’t going to be. The only thing that he would contribute and take from this was a temporary lodging and a new, equally temporary servant.

But then little noises kept coming from beyond the wall—clinking and ripping and the shuffling of clothes—and he found that it was enough of a distraction to keep him awake. “Knock it off,” he called with a lazy snarl, turning onto his side. There were days that he didn’t mind his heightened senses, and then there were nights like now, when he almost wished he was as deaf as a human so that he could get to rest.

“Sorry. I’m almost done.” Leona’s ear swerved as he picked up something else. A faint gasp, the sharp inhale of a hiss. He felt a growl rising in his throat when he heard it, though he didn’t know quite what it was directed at. Irritation that he was still awake, he decided on, when another of those breaths were sucked in.

Leona dragged himself off his bed, stalking over to the doorframe. Yuu almost jumped when he saw him, making a little flash of predatory satisfaction run through the housewarden. It was accented with the smell of blood, sharper now, since the wound was exposed to the fresh air instead of covered like before. It was a gash on his arm, still weeping a thin stream of scarlet.

It wasn’t just that one place, he realized, when his eyes slid to the hand gingerly letting his bunched-up shirt fall again. There was a bandage already on his abdomen and a bruise budding on his hip, only the very edge visible from where it dipped below his pantline. Leona supposed if he looked closer, took in a deeper breath, he’d find hints of even more blood and blue on his body.

That growl returned. “You really are easy to rough up,” he scowled, eyes smoldering as he looked at the prefect. Yuu averted his for a moment, but then thought better of it, staring right back with a face that said how unafraid he was. Leona’s glower grew. He was too bold for his own good.

“I’ve managed just fine until now,” the herbivore reminded, going back to his wounds as though Leona was nothing but a shadow on the wall. He didn’t make a sound when he dabbed some sort of ointment on the cut, biting the inside of his cheek to muffle it. But Leona still caught the faint scent of pain, something just as sharp and thick as though he was feeling it himself. If he looked close enough, he could see the way the herbivore’s eyes squinted, in annoyance and exhaustion and a list of other things Leona didn’t want to list, because he shouldn’t be thinking about it anyways.

What a pain.

Yuu opened his mouth as Leona stepped closer, undoubtedly about to shoot another quip at him, but he stopped when he noticed that the housewarden had swiped a roll of bandages, ripping off just enough to wrap around his injury. His wrist was thin, Leona found himself musing when he felt the way Yuu’s heart skipped and thudded from his vein. It was almost impossible to see what he really looked like, thanks to the uniform that was at least three sizes too big for him, but even then, he wasn’t nearly as brawny as he’d imagined, to be able to take on the number of his dorm members he had and win. Then again, he would have to be small, to avoid the spells that seemed to follow him like fire streaking through dried grass.

He didn’t say anything, even as Leona tied the bandage ends together, keeping it there to cover the slice on his skin. “Thank you,” Yuu finally murmured, when Leona dropped his hands and leaned back, eyeing him a bit more. He really was puny. He couldn’t imagine that he’d be close to a filling snack to the menaces that were the Leech twins, let alone himself.

“Just stop making noise.” Yuu sighed, but the hints of a smile were on his face. Leona almost scoffed at it. The prefect started to put back together the supplies, tucking a strand of hair that had fallen into his face back again. That was when he saw it, able to look at it without distractions like other people or fights that he’d started.

Leona had known that Yuu got hurt from when he’d overblotted, but he had never been able to see just exactly what he’d done. It was the first time he was seeing it from so close up—taking in the claw marks that spread from the side of his head to the corner of his jaw, still red and still fresh, even though the tournament had been some time ago now. With how big and long the four scratches were, Leona was almost surprised that the herbivore still had an ear on that side. But miraculously, it was still there, only with a few nicks and tears to speak of.

It was healing as nicely as it could, but even so, it would no doubt hurt like no one’s business if it was put in saltwater—like the very sea he was going to dive into. That silent growl returned, but now Leona knew what it was directed at.

“You’re staring,” the prefect mused, not looking over at him as he crouched to put the kit away. “I’m done now, I promise. You can go back to sleep.”

He felt something whisper inside him, like mounds of sand were forming to weigh him down. “Change into something else,” Leona grumbled, despite the way something putrid covered his tongue like rotten meat. “Your shirt’s bloody.”

The prefect blinked, and it almost looked like he was noticing that for the first time when he caught sight of the crimson stain on its front. Leona fought the urge to make that growl audible. “I don’t really have anything else,” he admitted, looking a little embarrassed as he did.

Of course he didn’t. Whether that was because the eels didn’t give him enough time to pack, or he just never had enough clothes in the first place, Leona didn’t know. He sighed either way, feeling the telltale drag of drowsiness start to pull him back to his bed. If he didn’t get to go back to it within a few minutes, he’d be angry. “Take something of mine then,” he ended up saying, trying to make this go faster so that he could get to sleep earlier.

“Are you sure?”

Leona just eyed him in return. “Anyone with half a sense of smell in this dorm would catch a whiff of it. They’d be on you in seconds if they knew it was from you.”

It wasn’t a lie. The members of Savanaclaw were more feral than they should be some days, and it ended badly for anyone who was foolish enough to show their weakness off for others to exploit. If they knew that Leona was housing a wounded defect instead of just a defect, things would get bad for the both of them.

Only, he wasn’t either of those things. Leona didn’t know what to think as he watched Yuu tentatively open his closet while he stalked back to his bed, taking out the first shirt he thought Leona wouldn’t mind him wearing. This was a person—a herbivore—that had somehow taken him on at his stupidest, weakest, but still most powerful moment, something that he still didn’t know all the details of and didn’t want to, and won. Out of everyone in this school, Leona could count the people who were capable of that on one hand.

And yet, he still got pushed around like he was the weakest in the pride, beaten and used like a chew toy. Every time Leona had seen it, when those little spats had taken place in the botanical gardens for whatever reason, he had seen how the prefect had never fought back. He just defended himself with a look of set grimness on his face, and once his assailants were satisfied, he just went back to his day like they did. Maybe it was because he didn’t have magic. Maybe it was for some other reason, but all Leona knew and cared to know was that that was the way of the world. Those not favored were always second choice, and those not gifted were always last place.

Leona’s eyes narrowed as the prefect reappeared again, gently scooting Grim away for him to have enough space to curl up. Except, he didn’t. He reached down for his bag, pulling out a stack of documents thick as Leona’s wrist.

“What do you think you’re doing?” he demanded, a snarl in his voice. It was too far past when he should have been asleep. It was too far past when the prefect should have been asleep, if Leona cared, but now he was starting yet another thing to keep them awake.

Yuu gave him a smile. Even in the dim light, Leona could see how it was strained, speaking of how desperately he wanted to drift off, too. “You can turn off the light. I won't disturb you.”

“That’s what your words are sayin’, but that’s telling a different story,” Leona countered, shooting an icy look at the papers. There was no reasonable way that a freshman should have that much of anything, homework or dorm responsibilities or anything else.

He didn’t put them away, much to Leona’s annoyance. He couldn’t read the text on it from his position, so he couldn’t tell exactly what it was, but he had a sneaking suspicion about it when Yuu sighed, rubbing the back of his neck. “They have to get done by the end of the week,” was all he told Leona, an apologetic tone woven into his voice. Leona met it with an unimpressed stare. “Pretend I’m not here. I’ll be quiet as a mouse.”

Leona’s eyes narrowed. Yuu tried to give him a sheepish smile, and that was finally the thing that made Leona relent, rolling his eyes as he let his head fall on his pillows. “You’d better be.” The last thing the prefect did before Leona made the light go out with a wave of his hand was put a finger to his lips, already displaying how silent he could be.

It wasn’t his problem, and it wasn’t his mess to clean up. So Leona let his eyes close, nestling just a little further into his bed to get comfortable. But he found himself keeping his ears alert, pricked and swerved just the right way to pin down the herbivore’s every noise. He really was quiet, Leona would give him that—the only thing he could pick up for the most part, even with his inhuman hearing, was the faint scribble of a pen and the occasional louder exhale of a weak sigh.

At one point, there was something a little off. The air changed in a way Leona couldn’t quite place, making everything smell and sound and feel different. Then there was the sound of a cork uncapping a bottle, a whispered swallow, the rustling of a jacket as something was taken out or put back into his bag. Everything changed to normal a few seconds later, as though the strange abnormality had never happened. Leona chalked it up to his half-asleep state playing tricks on him, when he wasn’t quite sure what was real and what wasn’t.

But the sounds continued. Every time Leona thought that he was finally done, as a silence dragged out for long enough that he felt himself slipping into complete sleep, something would always break it. The resuming of writing on paper, or a little murmur so breathy Leona couldn’t even call it a whisper.

Finally at his wit’s end, Leona let his scarred eye open, peering through the night to catch a glimpse of the herbivore. He doubted that the prefect had moved from his position in all the time they’d spent in darkness. If he had, Leona couldn’t tell—he still was hunched over his papers, pen moving as though it were the last thing keeping the world from ending. He’d gotten through a good portion of it, at the very least. The stack at his feet that Leona assumed were the finished ones was thicker than he’d expected it would be, especially when he could hardly see in the dark as well as Leona could. Efficiency seemed to be one of his strong suits, if nothing else.

Yuu stopped as he finished the sheet he’d been working on, staring down at the ones on the ground with a dull look in the eyes that otherwise glowed like two ghostly blue stars. Leona could practically hear the gears turning in the herbivore’s head, screaming and clicking from the lack of oil rest would give them. And then he stopped, listening to his mind's pleas by joining the two stacks together before storing them back in his bag. Leona breathed a sigh.

Only for the prefect to pull out another stack of papers.

Enough was enough. “What,” Leona hissed, making Yuu jump at how a single emerald fire was aimed at him from the dark, “are you doing.”

“My homework,” he answered, too surprised to lie. It took another snarl from Leona to finally make Yuu come to his senses, albeit if he had any. “I thought you were asleep.”

“You can see just how right you are, can’t you?” Leona could hear the way Yuu’s breath hitched when he lifted his head, raising up to glare at the freshman. “Wasn’t that other stack it?”

His throat bobbed as he swallowed. “No. That was— that wasn’t.” Yuu seemed scared. Good. It reflected in his eyes as Leona sat up further, silently demanding a better answer out of him. “They’re from the headmage,” he admitted, fidgeting with his hands under the housewarden’s smoldering gaze.

“‘Course they are.” It almost sounded like Leona wasn’t convinced, with the venom starting to seep into his voice. He was more surprised that the birdbrain would trust a job like that to a freshman with no place in the world and no magic to his name. Maybe that was exactly why, he realized, as he remembered that Crowley was the reason why the herbivore had even been investigating him in the first place.

It clicked then, what Yuu's role was in everything. Of course—he was someone unnoticeable and disposable. And Leona’s anger surprisingly changed to a new target, as he recognized just how little say the student in front of him had in anything. But no one in the room had to know about that. “Put them away,” he ordered, giving the papers such a heated look it wouldn’t be surprising if they spontaneously combusted. Yuu opened his mouth to speak, to no doubt argue with him, but Leona stopped it with another hair-raising snarl. “Now.”

Yuu gave him a look that only seemed half-annoyed, with how worry and fear was taking up the rest of his brainpower. “I’m sorry. I—”

“Stop talking.” Yuu immediately listened, closing his mouth without another word. So now he had some common sense. “Lay down ‘n sleep,” Leona told him, narrowing his eyes more for every second that passed where he didn’t. “I’m not askin’, and I’m not saying it again.”

Leona watched with eyes that didn’t miss a thing as Yuu did as he said, making sure there was no way for him to worm his way out of it again. Maybe he should start calling the herbivore the weasel instead of the pipsqueak, he thought with an almost sarcastic tone. He was small and slippery enough to be one.

Finally, the freshman seemed like he was done. So Leona laid back down again, hoping for sleep at last. “Sorry,” the herbivore mumbled, not-quite-quiet enough for Leona to miss.

His eyes opened again from where they had almost closed shut, feeling those sand dunes press down on his chest again. “Go to bed,” he answered, in a voice that was not quite as harsh as before.

The prefect shifted one more time, readjusting the blanket draped over his body for one final last noise of the evening. “Good night.”

Leona sighed, forcing himself to stop staring at the ceiling and listening to the prefect. Some sleep he was getting.

Once Yuu and his gang of freshmen disappeared from campus, Leona returned to his room instead of his regular spot in the botanical gardens. He’d been tipped off by the herbivore’s frantic studying to know that there were going to be one too many classes there for him to stomach, so he returned to his room instead, peacefully and blissfully quiet without his two extra roommates.

And yet, he did not sleep. For some strange reason, Leona dug through his possessions, without rhyme or reason, trying to remember where it was that Ruggie told him he’d stored a particular group of stuff. Of course, he’d been falling asleep, so he hardly remembered what the sophomore had said to him. At the time, Leona hadn’t cared in the slightest, but he supposed he was a little ticked off at his past self now, when he’d rummaged through enough places and thrown enough things around that he wanted to just stop and get in his afternoon nap.

Then, finally, in the last few seconds Leona had grumbled to himself he’d spend doing this, he found it, left to gather dust in a box in an unused room. Anyone without magic or muscle would have been doomed to get buried in all the discarded things, which was why Leona had held off looking in there until he was completely sure that was the only place it could be. It really was for the best that Yuu and Grim roomed with him, Leona found himself thinking, before he threw the thought out of his head.

He’d done more than enough for today, Leona decided. So he haphazardly threw it onto one of the many piles of things scattered amongst his floor and slunk back to his bed, hoping to catch a few winks before Ruggie came looking for him for lunch.

No one at this school pulled any punches, Yuu found, even for those younger and weaker than them. Any other day, under any other circumstances, she would have respected that. But now, when she was tired and cold and sore, Yuu just wanted to go back to her moth-eaten bed and let the world crumble around her.

“You’re not done yet,” Ruggie chimed, noticing how Yuu and Grim were about to fall back onto Leona’s couch and pass out, even though it was littered with mess. “We gotta clean, then you can conk out.”

Of course. Yuu sighed, grabbing Grim by the scruff to pick him up again and set him on the ground, too tired to speak. “This feels messier than last night,” she mused despite herself, knowing it was probably a little rude, but exhaustion removing her filter.

“It always seems that way when it’s your job to clean up.” Yuu hummed, grabbing any and all laundry nearby to throw in the hamper. If nothing else, she could try to be quick. Then she could get to the mountain of paperwork she still needed to do, between her homework and the papers Crowley had assigned to her.

The last few rays of sun trickled in through his balcony, and Yuu couldn’t help but pause for a second, watching the great ball of fire descend to the horizon. She only had two more days to achieve the impossible. It would have been difficult enough with a month, but with only three sunsets given to her, Yuu had half the mind to just curl into a ball and let herself give up.

But she couldn’t. Yuu wasn’t the only one standing to lose something now. It was the mess she’d told her friends she’d help them get out of, so it was her burden to bear. Yuu sighed, rolling her shoulders to hopefully shake some of the aching soreness in them from swimming the entire day, and got back to work. Leona did nothing but watch with half-lidded eyes, lazily following their movements as the two of them cleaned while Ruggie oversaw.

Once the rest of the room was devoid of things haphazardly tossed around, Yuu moved onto Leona’s desk, seeing that there was clutter still near its surroundings. She hadn’t meant to pry, but when she carefully took the blanket that was draped over the table into her hands, folding it absentmindedly, her eyes dragged across the words of the opened book below.

And then they widened. “Leona,” she called, feeling a spark of hope ignite in her for the first time in weeks, “are these your textbooks?”

His eyes had closed, and they did not reopen at her query. “What’s it matter?”

It wasn’t a yes. But it wasn’t a no, either. “Could I borrow them for tonight?” Yuu asked, glancing down at Grim when he made his way over. Hopefully he didn’t miss the silent plea she’d given him to start reading, just in case Leona suddenly got up and snatched them away.

Not that he'd do that. Or maybe he would. After last night, Yuu wasn’t really sure where his boundaries were in what did and didn’t make him mad. But the housewarden just hummed, not bothered enough to give her a proper answer. It wasn’t a no. “Thank you,” she breathed, taking them in her hands as though they were the most fragile glass and bringing them back to her makeshift bed.

“You’re still doin’ homework?” Grim exclaimed, the hint of disapproval in his voice. “We’re not even goin’ to class, minion. There’s no point.”

“We’ll still have to learn the material,” she countered, only half present in the conversation. The last of her attention on her surroundings disappeared when Ruggie snickered, echoing in her ears like the whispers of sand grains shifting against each other. Maybe tonight, she could finish her homework before such an unreasonable hour.

And Leona watched through that one hardly-opened eye, as the last of the light disappeared from inside his four walls, and yet the prefect still worked.

#first time posting fic on tumblr so fingers crossed the formatting is okay!!#this is both so much easier and so much harder than doing it on ao3 #twisted wonderland #twst #disney twst #twisted wonderland x reader #twisted wonderland x yuu #twisted wonderland x mc #leona kingscholar #yuu #twst yuu #leona kingscholar x yuu #leona kingscholar x reader #three nights remain #cloudedgalaxies

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