For a moment Alois wished he had the ability to will himself to sleep. Counting sheep did not work as he couldn't help but imagine said sheep taking form of Ciel's head which was what he liked to doodle when he was bored in class and therefore was not helping him lose consciousness at all.
He was thinking too much. Said thoughts revolved on one too many things and he was sure he'd be a walking zombie tomorrow which considering he had PE in the morning made Alois whimper in dismay at the thought of laps around the quad. Of course he did said whimpering silently as the other resident of the room was fast asleep.
Alois wished he could get up and wake Ciel up because nobody liked being up at night alone but he knew that the bluenette had Science for his first period and Physics with a half-there-brain was never good for anyone even the Ciel Phantomhive. Mr. Roberts as their professor never worked either.
Professor… hmm.
That was another thing that was keeping Alois up. Professor Claude Faustus had been whizzing through his mind all evening even through dinner. He'd played with his pasta and ate it under Ciel's wandering gaze as he didn't want to be asked any questions but he mostly thought of the spectacled teacher to the point he'd almost answered one of Ciel's questions with 'gorgeous topaz colored eyes' which he'd previously been fantasizing about.
The man was the epitome of fine if Alois had anything to say about it. For that matter he actually had a whole lot to say about Claude Faustus. For one thing that conversation about magic. It was a miracle that such a subject was ever brought up but to think that someone hadn't made fun of his belief in the supernatural… it made Alois sigh really giddily which he would never admit to mind. He had his pride too.
But Professor Faustus hadn't made fun of him, in fact he had defended him against Ciel's slurs on the topic and too bad for the Phantomhive boy but it seemed the even Professor Michaelis was interested in magic if the question on Hannah was anything to go by. Or maybe he just had a thing on picking up whenever Alois disliked talking about a particular topic.
Then there was that pentagram he'd found… on his tongue.
Alois was a very open minded person as Ciel had noted earlier today and granted he'd thought once that he would get a tattoo someday, the area he wasn't sure yet and what the tattoo would look like he was still pondering. However this thought had only come to him once (back when he was a willy-nilly first year) which was why he had been more than a little surprised to find a pentagram on his tongue.
How did that get there? Where did it come from?Who put it there? How was he going to get it out? Alois had had a sheer panic attack right before the silly little symbol disappeared from his tongue altogether and he wondered if he'd managed to swallow it and made it go away.
But that was absurd.
'As absurd as fairies then? As absurd as magic?' A simply nasty voice cried mockingly in his head. Alois huffed in frustration as he listened to that voice. It was a result of too little sleep and a night of over thinking. There were also times that he wished he could make his brain shut up or better yet turn it off.
Sometimes he felt he wasn't too right up there, almost as if he wasn't alone. There were moments where he actually did things without realizing it. His parents had said it was something close to sleep walking but Luka had once said that he'd seen him standing in front of a mirror and just staring.
His younger brother had tried to talk to him, asked what was wrong, and possibly get him back to bed but all Alois did was stare. Luka had also said that there had been a look on his face that had adequately freaked him, the gleaming in his eyes not something he had been familiar with at all. His little brother had took tail and ran to find their mother who came into the room just in time to see Alois faint dead to the floor.
When he had woken up he found himself in his mother's arms and Luka in his bed as well. She had explained what had happened and asked if he were all right. Of course he couldn't remember it happen and he didn't feel at all different. His mother took his word for it and simply decreed it as an episode of sleep walking and left it at that.
As far as Alois knew it had never happened again. If it did then his unconscious body simply gawked and ogled itself away from the prying eyes of an audience. Heaven forbid he did it in front of Ciel.
For Alois, being asleep was a time of being vulnerable. You were so blissfully gone from your state of waking that you had no idea what was going around you. It was similar to being in a room with no light, the absence making everything dark and therefore making you blind. He didn't like it, any of it, one bit.
The story that Ciel had told him about suffering through sleep paralysis had scared nearly twenty years off of his life and he hoped against everything that he would never have to experience it.
Dreaming was one thing but nightmares were a whole lot different. He liked the former. He feared the latter. Lucid dreams were somewhat better than plain old boring sleep but he'd take dreamless over Ciel's terrifying experience. Being trapped in a cage was bad for anyone, being trapped in a situation made you want to get out of it in any way you can, being trapped in your own body… how does one escape that?
Alois was determined to not let anyone or anything cage him, he was a free spirit and he wanted to keep it that way. Nobody would own him and nobody would keep him from doing anything he wanted to. He would not be trapped.
That said, the blonde looked away from his ceiling to the window by his bed. The moon was out and he could see some of the trees that littered the campus. It looked cold outside… that made him glad he was inside, under the covers, with his head on a soft pillow. He wasn't sure just how much time had passed but he was sure he was going to regret over thinking things tomorrow.
The moment Alois dropped into sleep, Ciel sat up and nearly ran to the bathroom. His eye had been bothering him for a while now since he'd gotten ready for bed but he didn't want to disturb his roommate as Ciel could sense Alois' growing anxiety. It may not have been obvious to the blonde but something was definitely bothering him to the point that he was not able to go to sleep.
For someone like Alois who usually dropped like a light that was worrying and maybe Ciel would hint at it tomorrow. For now he stared at the bathroom mirror, more specifically at his right eye which was now red. He could hardly see the blue and for that he was worried.
His mother and father had told him to call them when this happened but seeing as it was so late in the evening Ciel debated over disturbing his parents or waiting to see if it would fade away. Of course that put his mind at unease. He would not be able to concentrate at all in class if he didn't do anything about it.
His grades was the ultimate factor that had him going back out to the bedroom and searching for his phone before moving his way back to the bathroom which was the only source of light. As he looked for his phone, Ciel had taken a moment to stare at Alois' unmoving form and when he stared he stared.
There had been someone there… Ciel was sure he'd seen someone sitting on the bed by Alois' head. Or maybe it was the eye thing and he was seeing shadows. With more vigor, Ciel closed the bathroom door behind him and sifted through the contacts. It took a good minute for him to gain the courage to press call since he really didn't want to bother his parents who had busy schedules tomorrow morning for sure.
"What's wrong Ciel?" He was surprised that his father answered on the first ring. It took him a few seconds to regain his faculties and to whisper quietly into his phone.
"My eye's hurting. I'm sorry, I know it's late." He looked at his reflection again and winced when he could see that the redness had spread. "I can't talk very loudly because Alois is asleep but it's itching real bad and I want it to stop. I can't sleep."
"It's all right." His father had replied and there had been some shuffling of papers. Ciel wondered if his father was up on a new toy. "When did it start bothering you Ciel? I hope you didn't wait too long before calling us."
"Just before dinner time today." Ciel confessed. "I was gonna wait it out actually cause it wasn't too bad but now it's getting worse."
"That's what you get for not saying anything sooner." There was a reproaching sigh at the end of that. "It's a bit late for your mother or I to make a trip over there. I'm not sure that guards will let us in."
Ciel's grip on the phone tightened. "Oh no. I don't want you guys to come over, I just… I know you're both busy but I just want to ask what I should do."
"Nonsense." His father scolded with an air of them having this conversation more than once before. "You are our son Ciel, do not think that you're being a bother. If anything it's this toy that's being a bother. It won't work."
Ciel smiled at that. "Maybe it doesn't want to be built?"
"Well it's its loss." His father chuckled. "Do you still have any of the eye drops your Aunt prescribed you?"
Ciel tucked the phone between his shoulder and his ear as he riffled through the medicine cabinet. He managed to pry one of the tiny eye drop bottles from the very back where he'd hidden them in hopes of Alois never finding them. He eyed them warily, checking the expiration date. "I have one here but I'm not sure if they're still good. They've been here a while."
"Hmm. Don't chance it then. I'll be there tomorrow with your mother and she'll have a look at you. If she can't fix things with her motherly touch then we'll go to your aunt but only then." There was a brief pause. "I hope you're all right Ciel. I love you very much."
In a moment of sincerity Ciel gripped the phone tightly in his hand. "I love you too father."
"I know." He could feel warmth flowing through him from the call. Ciel was glad that he'd called his father even if it did rob him of the chances of falling asleep.
"Okay." He breathed. "I'm gonna go now so you can get back to your toy."
"All right. Get some sleep Ciel. We'll see you in the morning."
"Goodnight." He ended then hanged up. Minutes passed but all Ciel did was take deep breaths in hopes of calming himself down. There was no use worrying over his eye now since his parents would soon have a look at it. It was just now the matter of waiting for morning to come so he could ba taken cared off.
That short talk made him feel much better than his half-anxious half-dazed condition. The state of his very much sore looking eye was eating up the ease his father had placed over him and he quickly moved away from the mirror and back into the room.
There he took a deep breath and chanced a look at the clock that stood on the low table between his and Alois' bed. It said that it was four in the morning. Ciel debated getting into bed and actually getting some proper sleep but he knew it wouldn't do any good if he was supposed to get up two hours later.
Looking at Alois' bed where the blonde was now haphazardly strewn all over it with the covers tangled and all he was sure that neither he nor the blonde would be going to class later that day and succumbed to the tiredness that now washed over him. Head on the pillow and lying on his side, Ciel stared out the window beside Alois' bed and just waited to be claimed by slumber.
When it came, it's dark tendrils drew him to unconsciousness very slowly, the tugs on his brain gently wooing him to lower his eyes, to close them and welcome the darkness so that he could finally get some rest. His breathing evened out eventually and his body grew lax, deflating visibly over the mattress. Dreams didn't come to Ciel but it felt like no less than a second passed when his body woke up and he was sitting up in bed his entire being painstakingly aware of the people in the room.
His mother was staring at him with a rather stern look on her face and his father was looking at him quite apologetically. Last night's conversation hadn't been hidden it seemed.
"I'm fine mother." Ciel had all but blurted out. Now his mother was a very beautiful woman but she also had brains. The disapproving look on her face showed Ciel that she was now using them.
"You are most certainly not." She walked up to his bed and took down the bag hanging from her shoulder, producing a small flashlight and what he was sure was a camera. She fiddled with these as she talked. "We wouldn't be here if you were Ciel and since we both know that you aren't really all right can I ask what stopped you from calling last night at a decent hour so that we could take care of you better instead of at three in the morning therefore scaring your father half to death that something is the matter with you?"
Ciel could feel his cheeks flush with shame. He looked away from his mother's face and gripped the bed covers tightly. "I didn't want to bother you mother. It was just irritating me is all."
"I am your mother." She said. "It's my job to worry. Now look here so we can see what's wrong."
Ciel sat still as her mother did was she did best, and that was make sure he was okay. There had been a lot of poking and prodding on his person which didn't make sense because wasn't it his eye that was bothering him before she took snapshots of his eye and frowned at the camera.
"It says your eye is perfectly fine." She huffed and took another picture and was upset at the same results.
Ciel on the other hand was a little confused. "Isn't that a good thing?"
"No." She replied fiddling with the camera. "It means that whatever is making your eye red isn't showing up on the scans. It means I don't know what I'm dealing with and I don't know how to make you feel better."
Ciel gulped inwardly. Well that wasn't good.
When the door slammed shut, Alois' body met quite intimately with the carpets of their bedroom floor. Whatever or whoever it was that had done that banging was in for a whole world of pain. Once he got up that is but these plush carpets were so nice and warm that he was contemplating just staying there until he damn well felt like getting up.
He was fifty percent sure that it had been Ciel that banged their door since it would be a way for the bluenette to wake him up. But there was also the fact that judging from the light flooding the room it had to be somewhere around midday and there would be no reason for the other boy to be in their room unless he decided to ditch class today as well.
Alois' mind drifted at the point as he willingly pushed himself back to oblivion. He wanted to go back to sleep because sleep was nice. Dreamless or not, sleep was something he would never not craved. He didn't wanna say it was peaceful for the sake that he did not want to sleep forever. Right now though… sleep.
Or maybe not.
The knocks on the door drew Alois to turning away from it, his entire being refusing to get up just to answer. They would get tired of it and go away eventually or if they were smart they'd realize that it's school hours and since Alois was just as good of a boy as everybody else then he would be in class with the rest of the school population.
But the knocking… did. Not. Stop. It wasn't an insistent knocking, however after every time Alois was content enough that he was about to fall back to sleep the knocking would start up again! And it wasn't an obnoxious knocking either. Just three taps, quite polite but insanely irritating.
"All right!" Alois all but shrieked (not in a girly voice mind, just a very irritated one) before he flung himself at the door and threw it wide open regardless of whoever might be standing behind it. The blonde was out for blood and he would kill the man, woman, or thing that dared drag him away from-. "Professor Faustus!"
Then of course there's that.
"Mr. Trancy." The man was smiling, an eyebrow raised above his rectangle spectacles. The expression drew Alois to the conclusion that he looked like he'd just scrambled out of bed, which he just did but the other man didn't need to know that all Alois did was sleep.
In an act of attempted subtlety, Alois straightened his pajama top hoping to rid it of the wrinkles it now possessed and wished that he'd at least done something to flatten his bed hair before he'd thrown the door open.
Claude didn't miss what the blonde was doing and decided not to say anything about. Instead he asked, "May I come in?"
The question surprised Alois but he stepped away from the door anyways. "I'm afraid that you've caught me unprepared for guests. Please excuse the mess of things."
"You students are awfully busy, it's quite understandable." Claude hummed as he looked around the room. Alois winced when the man's eyes landed on his bed and he could admit that he'd let out a very relieved sigh when he didn't hear anything about it. When Claude finished looking his fill, he turned to Alois again. "I just dropped by to ask you why you were absent from class. Sebastian seems to be wondering why he's lost two of his students. I trust Phantomhive is all right?"
Alois' eyebrows drew together at that. The reason that Claude was visiting, in his room in the middle of the bloody day was because Sebastian was wondering about him being absent from class? And Ciel wasn't attending either? "Well… he didn't say anything to me. He wasn't here when I woke up."
"When was that exactly?" Claude asked teasingly as he reached a hand out and patted Alois' blonde tufts down. He wasn't too surprised when they shot back up, in fact he chuckled lightly and seemed to be enjoying the embarrassed flush filling in the blonde's cheeks.
"I wasn't sleeping very well." Alois deadpanned as he showed that he did not appreciate the other man's attentions as well as his teasing. He moved away from Claude before pulling a chair away from one of the study table's in the room and offered it to him.
"Oh?" Claude smiled as he took the seat. "Any reason why that's so?"
"Just…" Alois chose his words carefully. "Just over thinking things."
Claude made a show of pushing his glasses up and making himself comfortable. "Would you like to talk about it?"
"I thought you were a teacher not a therapist." Alois chided but he ran a hand through his hair in slight defeat. Bottling things up did bad things to you… and if anything this was the man who believed in magic and would surely not make fun of anything he had to say now. "I know it's crazy but I've been seeing weird things lately."
"Weird?" Claude echoed.
Alois nodded. "Yeah, yesterday around the afternoon I saw this weird seal on my tongue. It wasn't there when I woke up but I was just…"
"Over thinking things?"
Alois chuckled. "Maybe. I don't know. It's crazy and I was just probably seeing things right? I mean, symbols don't just pop out of nowhere, right?"
Claude looked at the nervous face in front of him and formulated an answer. "That depends. What exactly did you see?"
"Well," Alois' forehead crumpled. "I'm sure it was… it was a pentagram. Another thing why I'm slightly bothered because it's supposedly a bad symbol right? So why would it show up on my tongue of all places!"
"Why indeed?" Claude stood up, surprising Alois as he was getting into their conversation. He was shocked into silence when the man stood right in front of him and took his chin in cupped hands and fingers brushed over his lips. Alois could feel his entire body freezing with the exception of his face which was now very, very hot. "May I see?"
Not quite able to do anything else, Alois carefully stuck his tongue out but just barely the tip. When Claude made a soft noise at his actions he ducked his head, or at least tried to since Claude still gripped his chin. The grip tightened even as he attempted to look away.
"Come now Alois." Claude's low voice sent shivers moving down Alois' spine and almost as if in a trance, he stuck his tongue out further more. Nothing happened after that except for topaz colored eyes staring at his exposed appendage.
Then there was warmth. It grew and built and Alois felt very uncomfortable. He wondered if only he could feel it since in front of him Claude didn't seem to be bothered by anything at all.
Then that hotness grew too much and Alois could feel sweat dripping down the back of his neck. His tongue moved back inside his mouth before he realized where the hotness had come from and he all but spat his tongue back out. The grip on his chin tightened further but Alois wanted to get away. He wanted water, or ice, or something.
"P-Professor Faustus!" He cried as he felt overcome with that heat. He gripped the other man's hands in his own in an attempt to get away but the grip on his chin tightened even further. With wide eyes, Alois stared with fear into topaz colored orbs that were very much calm.
"It's nearly over Alois." Claude's voice cooed sending a breeze through the room and Alois couldn't understand why but that pushed the offending warmth away leaving him refreshed before it came surging back tenfold.
"Urgh!" He groaned, his entire body flushing and his knees growing weak. His hands still gripping onto Claude's was the only thing keeping him from falling, but a part of him wanted to fall, wanted to get away. Whatever this warmth was… Claude was causing it.
It felt like an entire eternity where he was doing nothing but roasting. Was this what hell felt like? His insides burned with an invisible fire that made him want to tear at his skin to get to the flames and smother them. He felt suffocated, covered in hot white inferno and nothing was making it stop or go away.
"Almost there." Claude's voice whispered again, and again came the cool breeze. Alois whimpered at the temporary relief before he cried out in dismay as the fire returned stronger than before. He wished he could tell Claude to never speak so that there would be no respite from the fire and to just get it over and done with.
When he saw the other man's lips moving to speak, he readied himself. The breeze that swept over him was the coolest so far and he nearly cried at such reprieve and at the thought of the incoming inferno. But nothing came.
Alois stared wide eyed and his tongue back in his mouth at Claude who seemed to be breathing a little too heavily. The grip on his chin vanished and the blonde fell to the floor, his entire body crumpling and his head hitting the white carpet. His eyes drooped and his body ached. Over him he could hear Claude's voice. "Sleep Alois. You'll need it."
AN: Claude most certainly moves fast XD Alois' birthday is coming up before Ciel's so we'll be focusing on him more but in time Ciel will get the spotlight. Next chapter will be more in Claude and Sebastian's eyes than the boys but I'll probably slip in some Ciel as well.
The parent scene was slightly awkward because I for one don't have a clue on how to write Rachel and Vincent. I didn't even put their names in for fear of making them entirely OOC. Sigh. What's done is done I guess.
So much love and thanks to Renell for such kind words! Your review totally inspired me to get to writing I swear. I hope that this was soon enough for you! XD And I hope that you liked the Aude I slipped in. Your request pushed that scene to fruition.
What do the rest of you think? :D
Nique