Sorry! I'm a bad person! I had to re-upload stuff because I saw some rather embarrassing errors that I had to fix for the sake of my sanity.
So, take two. I do not own Vampire Knight or any of it's characters, I only claim Lea and the plot. Isabel is my BFF's OC and she has given me permission to control her character for this story for all of your enjoyment.
Leanna Wilson squatted outside the door to the boys' showers and tried her best to not laugh too loudly. Any random passerby would think her to be either a creep, pervert or slightly insane. Anyone who knew Lea and passed by her now would probably just raise an eyebrow and kept walking. However, if Isabel or either of Lea's brothers had seen her now they'd either sit with her and ask to be let in on the joke or go run to check their stuff for booby-traps.
Lea froze and listened intently. A soap bottle fell to the floor and someone started screaming. A mischievous grin on her face, Lea quickly darted downstairs to the main lobby and tried to act casual.
She'd just taken a seat next to her best friend, Isabel Jones, and picked up her book when Hanabusa Aido hurried down the stairs. Dripping wet and a towel tightly wrapped around his waist, Aido looked positively livid.
"Who's responsible?!" He roared.
Lea didn't look up, keeping her eyes on the book and her face controlled. "For what? The water tracked all over the floor? Because I'm pretty sure that that was you."
Aido wasn't having any of Lea's lip. To him this was important.
Isabel looked up at him and gasped out a laugh. "Hana, what happened to your hair?!"
"That's what I'm trying to figure out!" He growled.
Lea finally looked up at him and immediately started laughing so hard she almost fell off of the couch. She tried to speak around the bouts of laughter. "I didn't HAHAHA! Think it would HAHA!Work so HAHA!Well! HAHAHAHAHA!"
Aido's hair was bright orange.
"You-! How did you-?! What?! Why-!?" He seemed to be having trouble forming full, coherent sentences.
Lea started to explain, having finally calmed down enough to speak, but just as she said the first word Takuma Ichijo walked down the stairs.
Ichijo had a lock of his newly pink hair twisted around a finger. "It's a good thing that pink looks good on me."
Lea was now on the floor, holding her sides.
Isabel's eyes widened. "How many people did you get?"
Lea wiped a tear from her eye and tried to look innocent. "Well, first I put black dye in my conditioner –someone keeps stealing it– but then I thought it would be funny to put some of my leftover temporary Halloween hair dyes in the boys' conditioners. I didn't know whose was whose though." She looked at Takuma. "Why am I not surprised that the strawberry-scented one was yours?"
Ichijo shrugged. "Just call me 'Ichigo'." He winked and left to finish getting ready for classes.
Lea smiled and turned back to her book. "You know, Hanabusa, you should go get dressed before I report you for exhibition and sexual harassment."
Aido's eyes narrowed. "Fine, but don't think I won't get you for this." He angrily pointed at his hair and then stormed upstairs to get dressed.
Still looking at her book, Lea spoke to Isabel. "You can nosebleed freely now."
Isabel spluttered and nearly choked on the water she'd been drinking. "What?!"
Lea rolled her eyes and elbowed Isabel. "Isa, don't think that I didn't notice. You were practically drooling over Hanabusa and all his 'towel-clad glory.'" She said, putting air-quotations around the last few words with her fingers.
Isabel began to vehemently deny this but the blush that stained her cheeks told another story.
"Iz, you're a terrible liar." Lea said, smiling cheekily.
Any further conversation was cut off by Zero Kiryu's rather melodramatic entrance into the lobby area. "Who did this?!" he shouted, flailing his arms.
Lea blushed for multiple reasons: first, she's had a crush on Zero since the beginning of the school year but has only managed to become fairly good friends with him; second, Zero wasn't completely dressed –his shirt was unbuttoned and his hair was still slightly damp; lastly, Zero's hair was dyed black and it was very attractive. But that also meant that Zero was the one who kept stealing her conditioner.
Isabel smiled, both at Zero's black hair and at Lea's blush. Sometimes it was good to be the one who knew all the gossip.
"Good evening, Kiryu. New hairstyle?"
Zero glared. "No! Someone put dye into my conditioner!" he looked at Lea. "Aido said you might know who?"
Lea's blush intensified; any brighter and it would match her wine-red hair. How on Earth was she supposed to her friend/crush that she was the reason his hair is now black? Well, it didn't look like she had much choice in the matter now. Fingers crossed he won't be pissed.
"I-ah... that is... well..." Lea stammered. She cleared her throat and tried again. "I did."
Zero had that is-that-all-or-is-there-more? expression on his face. When Lea didn't continue he decided she needed some prompting.
"You did... what?"
"Ah... I put the dye in the conditioner."
Zero's jaw dropped with a nearly-audible 'pop' in surprise. As his brain tried to process this, one could see the anger emerging in his expression.
"Why?!"
Lea's lip pouted in an almost automatic defensive/ maybe-if-I-look-cute-he- won't-get-as-mad sort of way. "Someone kept stealing my conditioner! It was the only way I could think of to figure out who did it!"
Isabel snickered. "So Zero conditions?Zero conditions with Lea's conditioner. Zero conditions with Lea's stolen conditioner."
"Are you going to keep repeating that!?" Zero snapped.
Isabel started sing-songing. "Zero steals conditioner! Zero stole Lea's conditioner!" If her grin got any bigger it would risk splitting her face in two.
During this Lea was watching Zero's face; if she hadn't known better she would have said that Zero's cheeks were pink, but is they were then that would mean Zero was embarrassed. Why? For stealing? For conditioning?
Shut up! Zero roared, perhaps a bit too loudly.
No. Lea thought. His face is just flushed because he's mad.Inside Lea felt sort of resigned, as if she'd given up on Zero ever really showing any special feelings towards her. Besides irritation, that is; Zero always seemed to be irritated at Lea for some reason or another. Lea let her shoulders droop and she sighed, heading upstairs for bed. Just because she lived in the Moon dorm didn't mean that she was a part of the Night Class. Oh no, Lea was too stupid for the Night Class curriculum and she knew it.
Meanwhile, Zero had finally managed to shut Isabel up...
"So why are you stealing Lea's conditioner?"
Mostly.
It was because of circumstances like this that made Zero glad he wasn't an easy blusher, not that he ever got caught up in stuff like this. The majority of the Day Class girls were too busy fawning over Night Class students like Takuma Ichijo and Hanabusa Aido to bother with him and the maybe 2% that weren't obsessed with the Night Class were too scared of him to try and interact with him. And Zero hadn't cared; most of the girls were irritating and too high-pitched for Zero's taste.
That is, until Lea Wilson had transferred to Cross Academy and gotten herself landed in Zero's year, most of his classes and his head. It had taken him nearly four weeks and a lengthy intervention from Ichijo and Aido for him to figure out why he couldn't stop thinking about the short, pale redhead whose head barely reached his shoulder. He was infatuated, such a ridiculous word for the equally ridiculous ideas in his head. Realistically, Lea was only making his job all the more difficult by moving into the Moon Dorm with her vampire best friend after a tiresome discussion with Headmaster Cross that revealed that Lea had known about vampires before coming to Cross Academy, having been friends with Isabel since the seventh grade, therefore landing Zero with a whole new set of rounds to add to his shift at night. But none of this excused nor explained his completely unreasonable urge to grab hold of the frail girl and hold her, both to keep her as safe as possible and just for the sake of holding her close and feeling her warm body and to smell her soft-
"Yoo-hoo! Zero! Earth to space cadet!" Isabel spoke loudly, waving her hand in front of Zero's face.
Zero started and shook his head, clearing it of its absurd notions, and brought himself back to the present.
"What?" He snapped, irritated at himself for spacing out. He'd been doing that more and more recently, once he'd figured out why he kept obsessing about Lea. Another head shake. Focus, idiot!
Isabel raised an eyebrow at him. "Thinking of a certain redhead that you somehow managed to upset? Again."
Zero gave a confused "What?" and looked around, surprised to see Lea retreating upstairs.
"Tut-tut." clucked Isabel, shaking her head and wagging a finger at Zero. "If you think that stealing her stuff, being so rude and then brushing her off is going to 'win you her heart' then you are sadly mistaken."
"I didn't steal it!" Zero protested to Isabel's disbelieving expression. "Well... not at first, I mean."
Isabel rolled her eyes. "Explain, before I take matters into my own hands."
Zero growled but obliged. "It was a dare, I suppose. Somehow Aido and I started talking about how he's always so prissy about how he looks and it ended in me getting dared to condition my hair but for some reason he wouldn't just let me use his or Ichijo's."
"So you stole Lea's?" guessed Isabel.
"Borrowed. And I didn't know it was hers at first. It took me awhile until I recognized the scent."
"And now you 'borrow' her conditioner every week?"
"No, I only borrowed it twice: once for the dare and again so I could get the brand. Aido actually was the one who kept stealing it just to see what would happen." Zero shrugged. "I suppose he was a bit bored."
"So then how'd your hair turn black?"
"That was me."
Zero and Isabel turned to see a fully-dressed Aido come down the stairs.
Aido continued. "I overheard Lea tell you, Isabel, that she was going to put dye in her conditioner so I continued the joke and switched it with Zero's conditioner." Aido had that self-satisfied smirk on his face and it kinda pissed Zero off.
"And karma was swift, I see." remarked Isabel playfully, nodding towards Aido's new hair color. The smirk quickly disappeared and Aido left, grumbling about pranks and gingers.
Zero smirked at Aido's back and would have left for his guard rounds if something Isabel had said hadn't finally registered in his mind.
"What did you mean 'again'?" Zero's eyebrows pulled together in concentration, trying to understand what she meant.
"Huh?" said Isabel, dazed. Apparently it had been her turn to space out since she'd been all dreamy-eyed in Aido's direction.
"You said that I had upset Lea again, but I don't see why she would be upset now nor how I may have upset her previously." Zero had always tried to be at least a gentleman around her. It was quite possible that Lea was the only person he was constantly decent to.
Isabel had on her you've-gotta-be-kidding-me face on. "You mean you seriously haven't noticed? I thought having a crush on someone made you 10x more aware of that person."
"You mean like you around Aido?" Zero asked absentmindedly, still struggling to figure out how he could have upset Lea. Women! Why did they have to be so complicated?!
Isabel blushed. "N-no! Shaddup, it's not like that!"
Zero scowled. "Then what are you trying to say!? Spit it out!"
Isabel sighed. "Remember when you and Lea got partnered for the English project a few weeks ago?" Zero nodded. "That was one."
"How?!" Zero demanded. He was positive that he'd been polite, albeit a little distracted -Lea had worn her long hair up and had a choker around her neck; very inviting, very cute and very very not good for Zero.
"You barely spoke to her! And then you did the entire project by yourself and didn't even let her in on it, let alone help!"
"I needed something to focus on." was Zero's brilliant argument.
Another raised eyebrow from Isabel nearly had Zero growling again. This girl gave him more attitude than Yuki and Aido and if she didn't stop soon... let's just say it won't be pretty.
"What about when you two were talking about Chemistry and you offered to tutor her?"
Zero was confused again. "That upset her?"
"You said she could meet with you and Yuki."
"So?" Zero and Yuki always met in the quietest part of the library or in the Headmaster's chambers. Yuki often got distracted and left after about an hour of not paying attention and would have left Lea and himself alone together. Perfect.
Isabel gave Zero the you're-kidding-me face again.
What was with all the cryptic-ness lately? If there was a point Isabel was getting at, she wasn't getting at it fast enough. "Isabel what are you not telling me? Because obviously there's something that you know that's making all of this make sense that I don't know."
Isabel gave him a mysterious smile. "That's for me to know and you to find out." She held up her finger, silencing Zero's protests. "However, you won't find out unless you stop upsetting Lea."
He glared. "I still don't know how I keep upsetting her; I didn't even know I had been upsetting her."
"Just pay attention to her. Make her smile, laugh at her jokes, maybe take a look at her sketchbook. You'll get where you want to be."
Zero half smiled. "I'm fine with where I am, it's Lea who's in the wrong place."
"And where should she be?"
Zero spread his arms, as if to offer a hug. "Where do you guess?"
Isabel shook her head. "You're doomed."
Zero smiled softly and started walking out. "Trust me, I know."