Chapter Seventeen

Spiders. They were on him. So many legs, feather-light, scurrying over his arms and chest and legs and – disgusting – he could almost feel the little hairs on their too-many legs, bristling against him as though they were the ones angered.

Disgust. Spider legs of disgust prickling at his flesh, crawling and making him want to scratch, scratch and claw at himself to get rid of that horrendous disgusted writhing beneath his skin. He began to do just that, to push back his sleeves and rub at his arms, trying to get rid of the goosebumps that had risen there. He scratched until his arms were red raw, little white trails from where his nails had dug in too hard, but the disgust lingered upon him like a second skin.

An odd compulsion washed over Sebastian and he dragged himself from his bed. He didn't worry about making so much noise at such a late hour, no doubt disturbing his seemingly nocturnal neighbours as he gripped the sides of his chest of drawers and pushed it, skidding it across the wooden floor so that it rested in the middle of the two adjoining doors. Both were half-blocked now and those scurrying spiders upon his skin calmed a little, the itch not nearly as maddening.

If nothing else, Grell and William could not get inside his room, not that night.

An exhaustion that weighed too much suddenly fell upon Sebastian. He stumbled back to his bed, dropping on to it without any of the usual effortless grace he possessed.

I can't...

He could still hear the screaming. In all his years, he had never heard a sound like it. It had barely been human. He could hardly believe a human capable of emitting such an agonizing sound. The noise had filled the room in a physical way sound should not have been able to, just as much a presence there as Sebastian himself. It had reminded Sebastian of being on a train at rush hour; people pressed tightly against your back, your chest, your sides, until every breath you were breathing was just someone else's damp and far too close exhale, complete strangers standing closer to you than even your family would deem suitable. The screaming had been so... there, like a stranger on a train, brushing against his shoulders. It was almost like it had followed him back to his room, the echo of the scream still rattling within Sebastian's skull as he lay in the stagnant quiet of his bedroom.

They can't expect me to...

He could still smell that smell. He hadn't wanted to think about it, what could possibly make up such a rancid odour, but just a single glance at the inhabitants of the room had left very little to the imagination. The place may as well have been a pigsty, the unfortunate patients just left in their little enclosures to wallow in their own filth. Vomit, excrement, blood – it had dried onto their clothing, matted into their hair, crusted upon the floor. Just seeing them made Sebastian long for the not entirely spotless bathroom that the staff all shared. To stand beneath that spray of scolding hot water and wash away the filth that had seemed to migrate to him, as though aware that he was clean and wanting to sully him.

I won't...

The experimental patients and their radical treatments, devised by the asylum's higher-ups, had been explained to Sebastian in excruciating detail by Claude and Doctor. For every technical term the two had used to explain the 'treatments', Sebastian had heard but one; torture. There was no hiding behind medical and psychological justifications, no insistence that what was being done was in any way to help those pitiful creatures, not even an attempt at the paper-thin subtlety that the patients upstairs received. It was plain and simple torture.

And Sebastian was expected to take part in it.

Oh, there was pandering to his obvious repulsion, of course. Claude was quick to see the look in his eyes and to silence the clearly oblivious and enthusiastic Doctor. Reassurances that the patients were too far gone for regular help. Only the most intense of treatments could get through to them now. There's so little human left of them now anyway.

Sebastian wished he could have disagreed to that last one, but... eyes with no intelligence watched them through the plastic, the patients prowling on their hands and knees around their enclosures, misshapen teeth bared and feral growls tumbling from their lips. He wished he could have disagreed, but goddammit, Sebastian wasn't about to start lying to himself.

He heaved a frustrated sigh, once again rising from his bed and stalking towards the door. Thankfully no-one crossed his path along the way and the bathroom was unoccupied, unsurprising given the late hour. Just to be safe, he twisted the lock, slumping against the back of the door and sliding down to the ground.

He'd been fine, really. Disturbed as fuck, yes, but still managing to somehow keep his head despite the screams trying to shatter it. And then he'd seen Patient V9. On the right side of the room, in the second to last plastic partition, V9 was wailing the loudest of them all. There was not a single word in the sound, not even an attempt at one, just unintelligible noise seeming to almost explode from his mouth like a speaker. With every scream he made, he flung himself unreservedly against the walls of his encasement. A dull thump punctuated the continued assaults, his broken shoulder leaving a growing smear of blood upon the already smoggy plastic. Sebastian couldn't help a small wince every time that small body made impact, could almost feel the heavy crash of bone against wall. As if the blood upon that wall wasn't enough, V9 was completely caked in it, dried and crusted to a rusty brown upon his clothes and skin. Particularly the left side of his face, so thick was the residue there that Sebastian could actually see little cracks in it. Without realising it, Sebastian's feet took him closer to the cage, and he could see V9 more clearly beneath the florescent lights. There was so much dried blood upon the left of his face, but where his left eye should have been, there was a gaping, infected hole.

Repulsed, Sebastian had stepped back, but still he clung to what remained of his calm. The final little dregs trying desperately to flee, he sunk his claws in and dragged them back to him, held them close – perhaps if he'd looked away from Patient V9 a second earlier, he might not have recognised him. Hindsight always had been a bitch, no more so than then. Sebastian had let his eyes linger upon V9 that moment too long and in that moment, he saw beyond him. Past the blood and raw, animalistic demeanour, and saw that the experimental patient now launching himself at the partition separating him from Sebastian was Peter.

Peter, who had been introduced to Sebastian as one half of the resident Neverland couple. Who had never been far from Wendy's side, always jumping to her defence, whether she needed it or not. Who had disappeared from the ward what felt like a lifetime ago, the one Joker had gotten tossed into The Room looking for, the one they had all just accepted to be dead by this point.

Sebastian's eyes suddenly swam, the bathroom seeming to sway dangerously, and he barely managed to drag himself to the toilet before he lost his dinner. His skin was damp with sweat, the air cold as it touched him, and he retched until it hurt.

"We are nowhere near being done with little Peter yet." Sebastian had heard Angela speak those words while he had hidden in Claude's cupboard, had watched as Joker was dragged away for the sole crime of defending a friend, and those words suddenly took on an entirely more sinister meaning. Honestly, he'd forgotten all about them in the chaos of things – finding out new information about St. Victoria's, forming an odd sort of camaraderie with Ciel, breaking the rules and seeing the true shadow of the asylum – but now they resounded heavily in his ears.

Sebastian had thought he had nothing left to lose but his body begged to differ, forcing him over the toilet bowl to heave once more.

He just couldn't reconcile the images, the fleeting memories he had. Peter, tiny but big in spirit, an ensemble character who had disappeared before the first scene had even finished, noticeable in his absence from Wendy's side. And then that, Patient V9, something Sebastian was having difficulty even thinking of as a person.

More questions than ever before battled for dominance within Sebastian's already rattled mind; what had they done to Peter, and what could he have possibly done to deserve such a loathsome fate? Had that been what was to become of Finny before they'd intervened? And was that what was to happen to the other patients from the upstairs ward, even Ciel?

It was a sleepless night for Sebastian, Ward V burned into his mind, visible every time he closed his eyes as though he were still standing in that hellish room. He bypassed the kitchen and went straight onto the ward in the morning. Breakfast was not an appealing prospect, made even more unpleasant by the possibility that he may get cornered by Faustus once again.

He'd developed something of a routine these days. If his shift began in the morning, he made his rounds with the other patients. Depending on who was up, sometimes he ended up playing the straight man to Joker and his endless attempts to lighten the mood on the ward. Other times he found himself in some bizarre and one-sided staring contest with Soma, who continued his new habit of making sure he was on the other side of the room from Sebastian before pulling faces at him. Either way, regardless of who he wound up keeping company, he never went straight into Ciel's bedroom. Although no-one had called him on or even seemed to care about his flouting of the no-doors-closed rule, Sebastian didn't want to seem too blatant and draw attention to his being in there so often. If everyone else was willing to play ignorant, he would make it as easy as possible for them. Today, though, he wasn't in any kind of mood to be playing nice. Ignoring the sparse few early risers milling about the leisure room, Sebastian strode from the ward door over to Ciel's bedroom, entering without any warning.

The room was bathed in shadow, thick black curtains pulled across the one small window that light could have crept through. The mess was less than usual, thanks to him not being able to bear being in such a cluttered room where a slight fall was likely to be lethal, Ciel apparently favouring the more pointy toys. Said boy's head was barely visible peeking out the top of the covers, a quiet breathy snore telling him that Ciel was deeply asleep.

To wake or not to wake? Sebastian would probably be needing his head for the conversation that was soon to follow, so rather than risk it being bitten off by a groggy and pissed-off cyclops, it was probably best not to wake him.

Resigned to a long wait, Sebastian carefully stepped over the mess and dropped onto the desk-chair. His eyes were sore and dry, no amount of blinking enough to ease the tiredness, until he stopped bothering to even open them. Elbow on the desk and chin resting in his hand, the quiet of the room punctuated only by the sound of their breathing, Sebastian finally succumbed to the lethargy.

As it happened, the wait wouldn't have been too long. Over the years, Ciel had become very sensitive to his surroundings. Sounds, smells, the presence of another, the slight changes that could possibly be a threat. It wasn't the sound of Sebastian closing the door behind him that awoke Ciel, nor the careful tread as he made his way to the chair. Instead, it was the rustle of clothing as he

shifted in his sleep that had yanked Ciel from the foggy in-between of sleep and consciousness.

Squinting into the darkness of his bedroom, Ciel pulled himself up from beneath the sheets, body tensing. Logically he knew there was only a handful of people it was going to be, the ones daring enough or that uncaring of Ciel's wrath, so he wasn't surprised when his eyes finally adjusted to the lack of light and it was Sebastian he saw.

Ciel shoved the curtain aside, morning light chasing away the shadows. In the new light, he could see that Sebastian really wasn't looking very well. His usually pale skin had taken on a pallid yellow hue, the man slumped over his desk at what had to be an uncomfortable angle, so deeply asleep that he didn't notice the pencil poking into one of his cheeks.

To have actually fallen asleep in his bedroom, Ciel figured Sebastian had to be feeling under the weather. His face so weary even in sleep, the boy almost felt sorry for him.

"Oi, slacker!" Sebastian was thrust back into the waking world by a good hard kick, enough to knock him off the chair.

Almost.

"Sleeping on the job? Tut, tut," Ciel scolded, shaking his head disappointedly. For the young Phantomhive, his emotions tended to cancel each other out quite fiercely. So if it were a competition between feeling sorry for someone and being annoyed at them, no prizes for guessing which one won out. Someone being in the room while he was asleep was a foul, plain and simple.

"Apologies, your Highness," Sebastian snapped, picking himself up with a scowl much more common on Ciel.

"What crawled up your arse and died?" The hypocrisy was apparently lost on Ciel, his own dark mood from the previous day either forgotten or purposefully ignored.

Rubbing at his eyes, Sebastian reclaimed the chair, "Couldn't sleep last night. Anyway, I have news-"

Ciel held up a hand, shaking his head, "It'll have to wait. You should get out. I've got an appointment with Faustus soon."

"You had one yesterday, didn't you? I thought they were every other day."
"They're supposed to be. He can't do tomorrow, apparently, so lucky me gets two days in a row. If he sees you in here when he comes to get me-"
"It can't wait," Sebastian interrupted. It was unusual for him to speak across someone. Even in his most sarcastic mood he remembered his manners, or more, remembered his Mother's slipper across the back of his head. Mama Michaelis was not at home to rudeness.

Ciel studied the odd expression on the man's face, unease beginning to creep into his bones. Sebastian watched in bemusement as Ciel gestured him silent, sweeping over to his bedroom door and rapping sharply upon it exactly three times. There was no reply as far as he could see, no indication that the boy was expecting one, and only once Ciel was back on his bed did he signal for Sebastian to continue.

And so Sebastian did. He'd been worried he wouldn't have the words to describe that place and the creatures within it, the things he was expected to do to them, but once he started speaking the words just wouldn't stop. He'd never been one for rambling, but then and there, whatever filter that usually existed between his brain and his mouth just put up its feet and called in a sick day. At first, Ciel looked disbelieving. However, as more details tumbled forth from Sebastian's restless tongue his expression warped, disbelief making way for distinct unsettledness.

"Did you have any idea that there was a second group of patients?" Sebastian asked when Ciel didn't seem about to break the silence. He'd expected the boy to go completely white, be visibly spooked and start clutching at that bloody post-it note that he still had hanging around somewhere. Instead, apart from the clear anxiety, Ciel was otherwise calm. When he spoke, he sounded more dazed than anything else.

"There were... rumours, I guess. I mean, they were from Dagger of all people," Ciel's nose scrunched up in concentration, "He heard from Soma, who was told by Agni, who I think overheard something from Ash? Hardly a viable information source. Besides, Dagger's also convinced that Angela's really a man and that Ronald attacks people with a lawnmower. Forgive me if I was sceptical."

Sebastian was less than sceptical about the latter, but right then hardly seemed the time to start questioning whether Angela was really a cock in a frock. He opened his mouth, questions at the ready, only to pause – Ciel was staring at him. Not in the polite looking at someone who's speaking to you way, but in a way Sebastian couldn't quite place. It was a very odd look, one he hadn't been on the receiving end of before, especially not from the boy. It was... guarded, almost. Calculating. Wary.

Three sharp knocks on the door cut through the silence that had descended upon them, almost making Sebastian jump. Freckles poked her head through the door, "He'll be here in a bit," and left it open behind her.

Ciel was still watching Sebastian with that foreign caution, voice mild but impersonal when he said, "You ought to leave. Faustus is on his way."

Claude was speaking, his monotonous voice drifting in one ear and out the other as the hour and a half of their session elapsed. He may as well have been talking to the wall behind Ciel, it was probably listening more than him anyway.

Ciel had been about thirteen when Grell Sutcliffe had arrived at St. Victoria's. Back then, the patient line-up had been different. He himself had only been there for going on two years, not yet the veteran he would become. He didn't know these patients like the ones who would later arrive, didn't care to know them either. They were too far gone, too taken in by what the asylum wanted them to be, so Ciel had to always be on his guard. He made a point of being there when new people came through the ward door, familiarizing himself with them.

The first thing that had come to his mind when Grell Sutcliffe had followed behind Angela into the ward was not a threat. The man was a bumbling mess. Long and stringy brown hair that escaped the badly tied red ribbon at the back of his head framed a pallid and openly nervous face, anxious and oddly chartreuse eyes flickering from one patient's face to the next. His trembling hands had fiddled with his uniform, as though incapable of staying still for a mere moment, one second straightening out the vest he looked plainly uncomfortable in, the next yanking his sleeves down to cover his hands completely. The second thing Ciel had thought as he looked at the mouse of a man was fucking moron. He wore his fear like a badge. There may as well have been a flickering neon sign above his head – EASY TARGET, CRAZIES, EAT ME WHOLE – with an arrow pointing to the pathetic little man. If there was one thing Ciel had learned in his two years there, it was that you did not show the remotest sign of vulnerability to these people. Vulnerability to an insane person was what a weeping woman on Valentine's Day was to a serial womaniser. An easy catch.

It had taken only a single month for The Change to capture the shrinking violet that was Grell Sutcliffe and turn him into the sadist monster he was to become.

The first thing to cross Ciel's mind when William T. Spears was led onto the ward was christ, you're in the wrong job. He hadn't been nearly as timid as Grell had, or at least he hid it better if he was, and he met the eyes of the patients without any outward sign of being intimidated at all. However, it was painfully clear that the only patient he was older than was Ciel himself. The man couldn't have been pushing even nineteen. It was all in the way he was dressed and how he held himself. In a word, forced. The gelled back hair, the thick-rimmed glasses that still had the sticker on them, the uniform too carefully assembled, the way he stood so rim-rod straight as though to appear as tall as possible. This man, if he could even be called that yet, was trying far too hard, and that was a big no-no with the patients. People so desperate to impress were very easy to break.

For him, stronger of will but still so wet behind the ears, it had been three months before he succumbed to The Change.

It was always the same. Every new member of staff who came encroaching upon the insane's domain received a judgement from Ciel, a judgement that would eventually be made null and void by the inescapable Change; Ronald Knox, is he even old enough to drink yet; Hannah Anafeloz, you'd have been safer a prostitute in 1888; Aleister Chambers, just... no; and even Agni, how did you even end up here?

It had eluded Ciel all these years. The reason behind it. When the staff arrived, they were, dare he say, normal. The cowardly and clumsy Grell Sutcliffe of that first month was something Ciel remembered even now, though he could barely reconcile that memory with the thing that was the Grell of today. The mousy hair became a vibrant if not gaudy red, the round wire-rimmed glasses were traded in for more fashionable spectacles that seemed to emphasise the always-present manic gleam his eyes had now. His slew of apologies were replaced by a psychotic grin. The less said of his favourite methods of treatment the better. How had he become so drastically different?

The Other Ward. Ward V, Sebastian had called it. That was how they'd done it. Was it like some sort of initiation, Ciel wondered, a morbid kind of hazing practise. Introduction To Torture 101 with your favourite instructor, Claude Faustus! Jesus Christ, it was worse than he'd imagined, and he'd imagined a lot.

How long had Sebastian been here now? Four months, going on five even. It had taken them a while to set their sights on Sebastian, at least compared to the others. The only exception to The Change that Ciel could think of was... Agni. The man who had been so clearly out of his depth on arrival and who had fallen so irrevocably for Soma that The Change just hadn't been able to touch him. They'd given up on him, hadn't they? And so they'd brought in Sebastian.

Sebastian, who Ciel had sunken his claws in to. The only chance he had of getting out of the asylum with a shred of his mind in tact. It was a mild comfort that Sebastian didn't seem to be developing a taste for nailscrews and waterboarding, but then again, Ciel would have said the same of so many of the older staff before they truly became staff. He couldn't afford to let his future freedom depend on maybes and faith in others – Sebastian seemed immune to The Change so far, but it was only just beginning, this horrid initiation, and if the first glimpse had spooked Sebastian to the extent that he hadn't even been able to sleep, just how much was the man going to be able to take before giving in?

Fuck.

Ciel could see it, his chance just slipping through his fingertips as Ward V pressed on Sebastian's mind and possible stability. Every other member of staff had been just as sane as Sebastian was when they first arrived – was that to be the man's fate? To become as deranged and inherently evil as the others?

I won't let him.

For the first time he could see it. As much as he hated trite sayings, the light at the end of the tunnel was in sight. However, reaching the end of that tunnel depended entirely on having someone walking down it with him. If he was ever going to get out of St. Victoria's, he was going to need Sebastian, and he was going to need him decidedly unhomicidal.

"Ah!" Ciel was pulled unceremoniously from his thoughts by the sound doubling to a painful intensity. It hadn't been so bad that day, just another annoying background noise that he'd been able to block out as he'd lost himself in thinking, but it became just as, if not worse than the previous day in all of a second.

"You seem distracted today. Is something the matter?" Claude asked, looking at him with innocent concern.

No, nothing the matter. Just bleeding from the fucking ears here.

"I'm fine," Ciel replied in a tone that made it clear he was anything but. Unsurprisingly, Claude ignored the tone and simply nodded, secure that he had Ciel's attention now.

"Oh, I forgot to mention. Ann has been requesting to visit again," Ciel barely had the chance to react to the statement before Claude shot him down, "Of course, given the self-harm allegations, your visiting rights have been restricted. I had to tell her no."

Ciel had given up even responding to the self-harm nonsense by this point. It was a losing battle, in every sense. Still, he would have been lying if he said he wasn't a little disappointed. After all, his Aunt was Ciel's only real connection to the world outside St. Victoria's walls. No doubt the visit would have been full of Ann's exuberant detailing of her wedding plans. What flowers she was getting – the reddest amaryllis bouquet, no doubt, her favourite – and what the first dance would be – Angelina would never go for something as stock-standard as a waltz, but Ciel knew little of dancing and even less of the different names. The wedding was in July, only five months away, and it went without saying that Ciel would not be in attendance. Hearing the plans from an excited Ann would have been the only way he'd know anything about the momentous day. Well, not any more.

Ciel knew what Claude was doing as well as Claude knew himself. It was such a transparent tactic, the boy was damn near insulted. By not letting him see Ann, he was cutting him off, isolating him within these walls even further. And Sebastian – he was part of this tactic too. The staff knew, had seen the... whatever it was between them.

Take away his link to the outside world. Take away his link to even a shred of power within the asylum. Do that, they thought, and Ciel Phantomhive would finally break once and for all.

Not a goddamn chance.

The Wednesday group sessions had originally been introduced by Tanaka as a means of getting the patients to become more familiar and comfortable with one another, to break out of the little groups they'd swarmed in to and refused to venture out of, to interact and just be more social with other people. Well, that was the official reason, anyway. God only knows what the real reason was. Probably just to make them even more uncomfortable than usual. The pretence of socialising and opening up to their fellow patients had been dropped in the record time of two weeks, when Gray had gotten bored of it. Every session thereafter had mainly been made up of thinly veiled insults, baiting or just outright ignoring them in favour of making small talk with Phipps.

Today was one of those days.

"Well, yeah, I mean, we don't need permission so I reckon once we're done here we just take off down town," he was saying, not even facing the patients, gesturing vaguely with his notepad.

Phipps looked what was probably his version of unsure, "Angela'll still want that form filled out."
Gray huffed, "I've got no idea what to put on those any more. I've already killed off the only sister I had left the last time we went for a drink. You got anyone left who could have fallen terminally ill over night?"

"Suppose we could say we need to restock?" Phipps suggested non-committally.

"But then we'd have to go through Faustus!"

And so it went on. The patients sat forgotten in the circle, talking amongst themselves too. Ciel had hoped circle time would be over by the time he got back but when had he ever been that lucky? Gray gestured him over without looking or even pausing his conversation with the other psychiatrist, scuppering whatever chance he'd had of slipping away to his room.

Casting a glance around the circle, Ciel absently noted that Alois was sat between Snake and Jumbo. It was probably the first time since the blond had arrived at the Institute that he hadn't made sure to keep a seat open for Ciel. Soma, on the other hand, was waving him over to the seat beside him, faithfully kept open. He couldn't be bothered thinking about Alois' drama right now. Honestly, the blond was acting like a petty high school girl whose friend had been asked to the dance by their crush. First it was blanking him. What next, starting rumours that he had herpes? He needed to grow up, and fast.

"How'd it go with Dr. Creep?" Soma asked, chipper as always.

"Same old, same old." Ciel rubbed at his ears, trying to get rid of the residual ringing. He still didn't know what the hell was making that noise in Faustus' office but it was really grating on his nerves, if only because it was taking longer and longer for the lingering echo of it to go away.

"Uh-huh. So, I'm curious, who pissed in his cheerios?" So the tension between Ciel and Alois was clear to even Soma. "He's been more of a bitch than usual lately. And he wasn't exactly a charmer to the rest of us in the first place, y'know."

The only reply he got was a lazy shrug.

As always, Soma refused to leave it at just that.

"Aww, c'mon! If the two of you are having a domestic, you can totally tell me about it, Ciel. I am your honorary big brother after all. And what are big brothers for if not to comfort you in your time of need? I read it in a book so it must be true – you're one of them stoic characters that's going to have a breakdown, character development and all that, so you need someone's shoulder to cry on. Mines all yours!"

This was a speech Soma gave him at least twice a week, usually more if he was unlucky. He still wasn't entirely sure when the sibling roles had been decided, he certainly hadn't had a say in them, and no amount of insistences that he was an only child and happy about it had ever discouraged the self-proclaimed Prince. The responses to the earnest speech were generally a scoff, a roll of the eyes or just the sentiment that Soma should off in the direction of a certain four letter word. Ciel was about to issue two if not all three of those responses, but then paused.

Instead of his favourite word beginning with F, Ciel replied, "Can I really?"

He almost wished he had a camera just so he could capture the gormless look of surprise on Soma's face at that.

"Wha – yeah!" Soma beamed, brighter than a one hundred watt bulb.

Once Gray and Phipps had decided between them that a mutual friend of theirs had been tragically hit by a lorry and probably wouldn't make it through the night, they called the Wednesday group session to a close and the circle dispersed. Soma followed excitedly behind Ciel as he led the way to the older man's room, his imaginary tail wagging fiercely.

Soma's room was, a surprise to anyone who saw it, spotless. Being as childish as he was, it was a common misconception that he was messy to boot. On the contrary, he couldn't stand mess. He was far too important to be wallowing in clutter and filth, after all. Although all the rooms had the same layout – single bed, chest of drawers, small bookcase screwed to the wall, small desk screwed to the floor, a bathroom with the bare minimum – they all varied depending on the inhabitant and the staff's outlook on them. While Ciel, being there so long and the recipient of unwanted favour from the head Psychiatrist, had numerous perks like a door that stayed open around the clock, as many trinkets as he could get his hands on and curtains for the window that, should the mood suddenly take him, he could quite easily hang himself with before anyone found him, Soma's room was essentially empty in comparison. Namely, his bookcase was mostly bare spare a few books and a golden necklace, his window was out of reach and without any means to shut out the light, and his open chest of drawers showed only one other change of clothes. The only member of staff who bothered with Soma was Agni, of course, and the Orderly was not in a position of power, so therefore could not give Soma things that would make the room more lived-in.

It was quite depressing, really, that such a vibrant person would live in such a banal room.

Soma bounded behind Ciel, kicking the door shut and hopping onto his bed, legs crossed and alert. He was obviously fighting away a grin, trying to look as serious as he believed the situation called for.

Ciel took the desk-chair, folding one leg over the other.

"So? What's up?" Soma was succeeding in keeping the smile off his face but the mature effect was ruined by his bouncing up and down where he sat.

"Well, I've been wondering. You and Agni, what exactly is the deal with you two?"

Soma was understandably baffled. Ciel Phantomhive rarely showed an interest in, well, anything. Of all the things for him to suddenly be wondering about, other people was so far down on the list it may as well have been added as an afterthought. In comparison, other people's relationships wasn't even on that list at all.

Soma wasn't as dim as people liked to think, though. He hadn't missed how much time his little brother spent with the not-so-new-anymore Orderly. The two of them were always holed up in the boy's room for most of Sebastian's shift, door kept tightly shut for whatever reason. Even when Ciel ventured out of his room, it was his side that Sebastian went to and the two always had their heads bowed together, playing a game or talking about something or other. You'd have to be blind not to see it.

Soma could feel himself getting teary-eyed. His little boy was all grown up.

"Agni and I are together, in a sense. I mean, we can't exactly call it dating since that involves actually going on dates, y'know? The closest we've come to that is when we both happened to be in the garden at the same time. But I love him," Soma confessed, turning uncharacteristically sober, "And he says he loves me too."

Ciel listened intently, nodding slightly, "So what was he like when he first showed up here? Can't say I really remember."

"Same as he is now, really," Soma chuckled, "Well, he doesn't look as miserable as he did back then. Thanks to little old me, I'm sure."

Ciel looked oddly pleased to hear that, and Soma couldn't really figure out why.

"So have you two fucked then?" Ciel asked shamelessly, as though he were simply asking the day of the week or if someone had the time. Soma flushed a delightful red at a speed that would have put Meirin to shame. It wasn't so much that it was unusual for Ciel to be blunt, he gave the word a whole new meaning sometimes, but it was downright bizarre for him to care about something like that.

"Geez, Ciel, ask me what you really wanna know, why don't you," Soma laughed uncomfortably, unable to meet his maybe-not-so-little brother's eye.

"No need to be shy, Soma. We're men. Men talk about these things. I take your reaction as a yes, then?" Dear lord, the boy could be so clinical sometimes. It was like he'd learnt how to talk to people from studying a how-to guide.

"...I, er... yeah, we've slept together... but a gentleman wouldn't ask," Soma mumbled almost unintelligibly, finding the hole in his duvet cover suddenly very fascinating.

"Right. Thanks."

Soma reluctantly looked back up when he heard the chair scraping across the floor, Ciel rising to leave. Before the boy reached the door, he jumped from the bed and caught Ciel's wrist, almost causing him to stumble. Purposefully, he held the too thin wrist tight, tight enough to leave an imprint of his hand, no room for Ciel to squirm free. As Soma knew he would, Ciel's face twisted as he tried to wrench his hand free.

Very few people saw a serious Soma. Just like Joker, he did his best to always smile, always joke, always laugh. He was one of the older ones and so it was his duty to try and make things that little bit easier on the younger ones. Even if all he could do was try to lighten the tension that always plagued their walls, he'd do his very best. In fact, it was highly likely that Agni and Ciel were two of the only people to see a genuinely serious Soma. They would both attest that it was a very disconcerting thing to see.

Voice as stern as an old professor, Soma looked Ciel dead in the eye and asked, "Is Sebastian trying to pressure you in to something?"

The only thing that kept Ciel from bursting out laughing was the intensity of the raw concern for him on Soma's face. He knew he wasn't the most compassionate of people, but even he couldn't bring himself to laugh in the face of such worry, especially if that worry was for his sake.

"Ciel, you do not have to do anything you don't want to do, okay? And Sebastian is trying to make you, well, you just come to me, alright? If he tries anything on with you-"

"What'll you do, Soma?" Ciel gave a small grin.

Grip in Ciel's wrist slackening, Soma puffed up his chest, beating on his imaginary muscles with his free hand and declaring, "I could take Sebastian on!" He deflated just as quickly, grimacing, "W-Well, with a chair or something. I mean, he's a pretty big guy."

Ciel slipped his wrist free, giving a rare genuine laugh and squeezing his friend's arm. It was probably the first time Ciel had willingly touched Soma, and it only made Soma worry all the more.

"Don't worry. I know what I'm doing."

The words had been intended to comfort. They only tightened the knot twisting in the pit of Soma's stomach as he watched Ciel walk leave the room.