Chapter Text
Why did he ever give his number to Rook Hunt and Vil Schoenheit? The answer was very simple for Vil. He'd given it to Vil because sometimes Vil had the best fashion dilemmas and Alchemy questions he'd ever receive from anyone, not just a student. It's long been clear, at least between the two of them, that they are some form of each other's muse in fashion and poisons, and so clearly it wasn't a surprise when he decided, out of goodwill, to finally give Vil his number when the boy had requested it after turning 18.
Why did he give his number to Rook? He still doesn't know, honestly. Half of his consciousness is certain he gave it when he was drunk from vodka and Rook came to ask him for the keys to the labs at an ungodly hour in spite of the fact that Pomefiore had its own private lab. Another half of his consciousness is certain that he gave it because Rook somehow managed to hunt him down at 2am and stood by his bed until he woke up to drink water, and he'd desperately asked Crowley to step up the teachers' quarters' security.
So, yes. That probably answers the question why these two have his number. That also probably answers why his phone is buzzing at midnight.
“Sensei!” Vil Schoenheit's contact is flashing on his screen. He puts aside his beer for now, picking up his phone to check the message properly. But there's nothing there yet, excepting the ellipsis that blinks over and over again; he hopes Vil isn't sending him some essay through a message instead of an email, though it wouldn't be a precedent, of course.
But the message that eventually pops makes him wish he'd received an essay instead.
“I'm pregnant.”
On instinct and, perhaps, impulse, he shields his phone, lowering its brightness before he slams it screen-first against his lap. Hoping no one saw it, even though he's alone in his room and Mozus probably can't hear him from next door unless he dropped the bottle of beer, and thankfully that had been set aside on the table before he checked the message.
Cold sweat breaks down his back even though Crewel knows fully well he'd done nothing to warrant such a message. Sure, there'd been times where he didn't keep away his whiskey knowing that Vil was going to pester him about Alchemy and he didn't want to do it sober anyway, but surely he never would have crossed a line even if he was blackout drunk? Surely? There's many ways to resign from this shitty paying job, but getting fired for statutory rape is not on his list of considerations.
So, instead, he does the smartest thing ever.
He blueticks the model. Voila. Rolls back into bed and decides he shouldn't have stayed up to mark those scripts after all, Seven knows that Crowley doesn't write enough off on his paycheck for him to have been working this hard. It's been years since he's laid in bed this straight and this early, his phone parked to the side, but sleep evades him like a child that fears a monster beneath their bed, except it's a horror to hear his phone buzz again and know that definitely even Trein would be asleep by now, Trein wouldn't be texting him fake dog videos at the wee hours of night.
This time he doesn't open the messages. This time he's wiser; he doesn't open the chat but instead peeps at the message from the notification bar:
Sensei, would you like to read my poetry?
Followed immediately by:
From the moon's gaze,
Utopia invites its warming
Coalescence, into a
Kingdom of sleepless dreams.
Does he want to know why at all Rook is sending him a poem at ungodly hours? Does he want to know why Rook has written such an ominously haunting poem and decided to send it to him? Should he be noticing the way a certain four lettered profanity forms from the starting letter of each word? Acrostic poems, he's learnt to be sensitive to them since the last time the two used many of them to discuss openly across his class until even some of the other students were beginning to fluster. Crewel doesn't need to get all interpretative to tell that this one has many messages in itself about the kind of predicament he's in, along with the new message from Schoenheit that has only one word: Sensei?
"Thirty seconds, tell me if I should be in Pomefiore or if the two of you are going to come down here right now."
So he shouldn't be surprised to hear the knock on his door immediately after, the glamourous expensive silk pyjamas of Vil Schoenheit in his night slippers and Rook Hunt with his Victorian-Child-reminiscent night cap and candle, for some damned reason.
"Serenaded at midnight by a poem and a confession," Crewel starts — he starts pouring the whisky full to the brim and gulps it like a shot. "What did I do, Schoenheit? What have I done to warrant this, Hunt?"
"We're here to discuss an academic plan, sensei." And Vil Schoenheit means business, two hands on the table and a tablet that looks like it's been borrowed from Idia to run a planning application just for him. "We need you to help us convince the Headmage that this will work."
No nonsense, nothing. No hesitation, no mention of abortions, no drama, even though Rook's eyes shine over with tears and he offers the glass — yes, he's not supposed to — to save himself from hearing Rook's weeps. The hunter takes the whiskey surprisingly well, like a champ, but the concern is bright in Vil's eyes, an unspoken admonishment in the pale of Vil's complexion, and the manicured hand that subconsciously creeps to cover his mouth. "Sensei? Are you onboard the plan?"
A devil's contract, Crowley had said, when he'd been willingly been scammed into collaboration by Azul Ashengrotto. And never in his teaching career has Crewel ever felt that he might perhaps even resonate, not to mention so wholeheartedly, with a sentiment from Dire Crowley.
"What am I getting myself into?" He whispers, but maybe that was the question that he ought to have asked before he gave out his number in the first place. "What is going on, Schoenheit, Hunt, you bad pups?"
"We're having a baby, sensei." And to finally make things clear, Vil's hand is in Rook's non-whisky-holding hand. "I thought it was rather clear?"
But, really, from the unwarranted confession to the profane acrostic poem, this is what he long should have expected.
From texts at midnight.