Chapter Text
It was starting to get late, but Sargeant Kerry Lewis didn’t feel like returning to her own more or less Spartan room in the school, now that she was hanging out with Elliot Kelly in his room. Normally, she didn’t care for the insane amount of posters and figurines and trinkets and pillows with soft colours and cute shapes and other clutter that Elliot kept in his room, but today, it felt soothing to her. It had been quite a day. Teaching control without having a curse herself was always a risk because she had to rely on her muscles and technique when something was getting… well, out of control. That usually worked out, but today, one of the fourth years had been in a horrible mood, and having had his growth spurt over the summer and his curse being quite physical in nature, Kerry had needed two of the other students to help her pin him to the ground until he behaved. She had tried to remain calm, or at least to show herself as calm while she disciplined the kid and told him he’d have to report to Hexmaster Singh for this, trying not to show that she was genuinely shaken and didn’t trust herself to oversee his detention right now.
She had had another class after that, with year two, but that wasn’t as bad. They were still rather weak and wouldn’t freak out as much as the first years often did. It wasn’t the best class she’d ever taught, but she managed and as soon as the bell rang, she grabbed her dinner and went straight to Elliot’s room, hoping to find him there, because she was not climbing the whole fucking Tower of Respect right now. She’d seen enough bellends today.
Luckily, Elliot had been in his room and had been happy to have dinner with Kerry, joking about how it was funny for Kerry and Kelly to be eating curry together. It was silly, but it calmed her down and venting about her students to Elliot helped even more. He agreed that the fourth years were a tough bunch and that he had doubts whether the guy that had attacked Kerry today would graduate if he didn’t change his attitude.
“We should talk about that with Ranjit,” he said. “I mean, yeah, you don’t have a curse or magic, but you’re perfectly capable of holding your own against any other student, including the werewolf who ate his whole family. This is not something we can accept. I can talk to the kid as well – well, I have to talk to him.”
“Thanks fuzzball,” Kerry said. She tightened her mouth as she considered saying more. She didn’t like to be vulnerable, but if anyone would be understanding and discreet about it, it would be Elliot. “It just made me feel so powerless,” she admitted. “What if this happens again?”
Elliot nodded, his whole face expressing compassion.
“I’ve had fights with students where I felt powerless,” he said. “Not many physical fights, since I’m quite a big guy, but some boys are just adopting this identity of being a monster so they can deal with their feelings of guilt and regret and it’s so hard to talk them out of that. They get angry at me a lot, because the only way for me to help them is to break down their sense of identity and they don’t like that, so they want to show me the monster. Sorry, I’m just talking about myself now. I don’t mean to compare that to your experience.”
“That’s all right,” Kerry smiled a little. “The more you talk, the less I have to.”
“I can talk all night.”
And he did, at first a little more about what had happened today, and later about all kinds of things. Other students that were hard to deal with, or students who were nice or funny. And about Elliot’s home life, about how he shared a little public garden with two of his friends that he took care of during the school breaks. About his sister and her children and how he loved hanging out with them. And Kerry felt herself relax. They moved from the dinner table to the couch, between all of the fluffy pillows and stuffed animals.
“Squishmallows,” Elliot said with an excited smile, as if that explained anything. Kerry found herself leaning towards Elliot, simply because the couch was so soft and the pillows dented towards each other. She didn’t mind it though, because Elliot was also soft and fluffy, so she rested her head against his shoulder as he kept talking about random stuff, checking in with Kerry every now and again to see if she was still interested in his stories. His voice worked like a lullaby on her and when he gently nudged her so he could stand up and make the two of them tea, she groaned because she had been so comfortable. Luckily, he came back quite quickly and now she could lean against him while sipping herbal tea, which was arguably even better.
“It’s almost 11,” Elliot remarked at some point. “That’s usually when I start getting ready for bed.”
“So I should go, is what you’re saying?” Kerry couldn’t help sounding a little disappointed. She was having a good time just listening to random things Elliot happened to think about, feeling his warmth… it was a good way to feel safe again after the incident today.
“Well, I do want to get enough sleep tonight. You’re welcome to stay over if you want to.” He said it jokingly, but didn’t backtrack when Kerry said she’d love to, actually. Instead, he told her to go get her pyjama – she told him she didn’t have one and if underwear would work too, sure – and her toothbrush, so they could make it a sleepover. She also picked up some clean clothes for the next day and made her way back over to Elliot’s room, hoping no student would randomly be roaming the hallways and wondering where she was going. She got lucky with that.
Elliot was already brushing his teeth, wearing colourful shorts and a T-shirt with a print from some kind of game or film Kerry didn’t know. She joined him in the tooth-brushing and then they went to his bedroom, where he looked from his double bed that was covered in pillows, to her.
“Do you want to sleep next to me, or should I take the couch?” he asked.
“I’ll sleep next to you and those pillows can take the couch,” Kerry said.
“Oh, just toss them on the ground.”
Having been militarily trained, Kerry refused to do such a thing and moved all the pillows that were in the way to the couch anyway, which Elliot apparently found very amusing. Then she folded her clothes, put them on one of the rare surfaces that weren’t covered by random clutter and crawled into bed next to Elliot.
“I’m big spoon,” she announced, which Elliot clumsily saluted before rolling onto his side away from her.
“I’m teddy bear then,” he said.
“Alright, well then… good night?”
“Hey, Kerry, look,” Elliot said excitedly, before clapping twice. The lights in the room turned off.
“Cool.”
“Good night.”
Kerry wrapped her arm around Elliot and tried to lie as close to him as she could without being poked by a horn of suffocating in his curly hair. It took a second, but she found a comfortable position and fell asleep almost immediately after.