On all the divine above, Prince of the Tyre sucked.

You struggled to focus on your text, which was so aggressively annotated that it was barely legible anymore.

PERICLES: Antioch, farewell! for wisdom sees those men Blush not in actions blacker than the night Will 'schew no course to keep them from the light. One sin, I know, another doth provoke; Murder's as near to lust as flame to smoke.

You murmured the last two lines under your breath. You knew them by heart, have known them for months, but the fear that you would forget a word or phase halfway through your audition gnawed at you anyway. Your gaze strayed to James, hunched over a book in the corner. " Do you ever wonder if Shakespeare knew these speeches half as well as we do? "

He withdrew from whatever verse he was reading, looked up, and said, " Constantly. " You cracked a smile. " Well, I give up. I'm not actually getting anything done. "

He checked his watch. " No, I don't think I am either. " You heaved yourself off the sofa and followed him up the spiral stairs to the bedroom you shared. It has once been used only as an attic, but the cobwebs and the clutter had been cleared away to make room for more students in the seventies. Twenty years later, it housed you and James.

It was pretty late, midnight, considering you and the rest of the forth years have been in the library ever since five.

You thought you'd get some sleep.

Apparently, not.

Apparently, James had other plans.

PS: Camilo really shouldn't have assigned James the leopard.

The sweet, thin embrace of sleep dissolved as soft weight crashed on top of you, knocking the quiet inhale out of your lungs, eliciting a cry. In the dim, cold sliver of moonlight, James' keen grey eyes gleamed. He spent the last month prowling around your room in the dark before he sufficiently absorbed into the role to pounce on you in your sleep. Tonight was one of the many, so it seems.

He noticed the wild look on your face and shrugged, the faint flutter of his shoulders against yours. " Sorry? "