Rose-Red Loverboy

Viii

It wasn't like what happened was enough to keep them awake at night, but it did still linger in their mind. He seemed so much softer now— as if he was the one now walking on eggshells in his own dorm. It didn't take that long to shrug off the thought, but unfortunately insomnia managed to creep in. Going to school tired sucked, but it wasn't like it was new to anyone, especially not to anyone who was regularly sleep deprived.

After getting maybe 2 hours of sleep, {y/n} ended up going to school like normal. For once Trein didn't yell at them in history, too focused on some other kid's antics. Most of the class was spent yelling at said kid for being disruptive," {y/n} was far too tired to pay attention to if it was the same kid as last time— so the class had almost twice the homework they usually had. They could ask Azul for help, but they really didn't want to owe him anything.

After an exhausting school day, they made their way back to their dorm room to relax. They had a few messages from their friends, mostly them having heard about an overblot happening at NRC and making sure that {y/n} was ok, but it wasn't much.

Homework wasn't something they were looking forward to. It wasn't really something anyone ever looked forward toâ€" but with double what was usually assigned to them, an upcoming alchemy test, and a practical magic exam they had to practice for by next week, it was even worse. They've been in worse academic situations. most of their other classes weren't doing much, the teacher they had for language's wife just had a kid so he hasn't been here the past week so its been easy to make up for that, and nothing was really out of the ordinary in the other ones.

One nap later, and they found themselves in the common room of Heartslabyul. It was to grab a snack to eat while studying, but they seemed to conveniently run into the same redhead from yesterday. He was making an afternoon cup of tea when he noticed them making their way towards the kitchen.

"{y/n}," He seemed to scan over them once before going back to boiling water in the kettle on the stove. "Did your bruise heal properly?"

"Well, you did use healing magic on it so yeah. It was only a bruise though, it wasn't like it was anything serious," they glanced between Riddle and the kettle, feeling a bit awkward. It was really the first time they had an actual conversation with him. It felt out of placeâ€" him to be so laid back with them, and they couldn't bring themselves to let their guard down.

"I was simply fixing my own mistakes," he insisted, not bothering to look over to {y/n}. They knew that it would be impossible to convince him otherwise, so they didn't really say anything.

They grabbed something from the fridge, quickly wanting to avoid any awkwardness. The air seemed almost still, too silent to be comfortable but any words would make it worse. And yet, as they turned and began to walk back to the direction of their room, something felt like it was stopping them.

"Housewarden," they started, looking over their shoulder to the short man.

"Just Riddle is fine," he interrupted them before looking back to his tea kettle, making sure it didn't boil over and really not having anything else to focus on in the moment.

"Right..." there was no way it wouldn't feel awkward to address him so casually, but if he didn't want them to call him by his title, they decided they might as well use his name no matter how odd it felt. They were going to just drop the small little question that had bubbled up before they could think, but he butted in again.

"What is it?" He asked, his gray eyes now focused on {y/n}'s face. Now that he had asked, they couldn't just scamper off to avoid any further awkwardness.

"Well.. what kind of tea is that?" Their voice was hesitant to continue this awkward conversation, and in all honesty they didn't care for the answer. They didn't even know why they asked— they should have just went back to their room and they didn't.