A/N: I need something to read! I would love to R&R for you guys so feel free to suggest your own stories that are SebastianxCiel, SebastianxGrell, GrellxUT or Grelliam.

"Oh daaaarling, I have lunch!"

William looked up to find Grell leaning in the doorway of his office holding a rolled up paper bag, hand on his hip. He sighed. Grell had been working for him for a couple months and they had never talked about college. He could feel the tension between them, the mutual knowledge of his broken promise, but they skirted the subject like it was poisonous. Grell was always chattering but never saying anything. His words were often just empty things to fill the space between them.

"I'm not your darling," he said, though he was already making room among his paperwork for the food to be sat down.

Instead of taking the chair across from him, Grell perched on the side of the desk as always, boots resting on the gleaming hardwood floor. He was wearing the same feminine perfume William had gotten used to and he drank with his pinky up. William observed him from the corner of his eye while they had lunch. Grell's hair had mostly fallen out of his braid and tangled slightly with the chain on his glasses but unfortunately he was lovely. This was unfortunate because Grell knew good and well the attention he drew, but no matter how many people cut him funny looks or called him a freak, he seemed to pity their narrow minds rather than let them affect his confidence.

When they cleaned up from lunch Grell lingered while William caught up on paperwork. It seemed to multiply as fast as the amount of children in his care. He wasn't through his first page when the fidgeting and fussing next to him became too distracting, and he looked up again with an exasperated sigh.

"What in the devil are you doing, Sutcliff?"

"I'm trying to get my-ow! Oh, dear. My hair's a dreadful mess."

"Perhaps you should cut it, then."

Grell scowled at him as he tried to unravel one of his long hairs from his glasses chain. "What kind of lady cuts her hair off because it's a mere inconvenience? I wouldn't dream of taking the easy way out!"

After a few more dramatic cries of pain William slammed his file down. "Oh, come here. Sit."

Grell flounced into his newly vacated chair with a big smile. He had learned if he carried on long enough William would cave and put them both out of their misery. William stood behind him and began the tedious process of putting his hair back in order, feigning deaf to the happy sounds Grell was making at his touch. He wove it back into a long plait and let it fall against Grell's back. "There. Now go get some work done."

"Such a slave driver. That's alright though, I am every bit as strong as the red string of fate tied between us, my love!" Grell jumped to his feet, planted a kiss of gratitude on Will's cheek and ran out of the office before he could be reprimanded. William felt his eyebrows contracting with frustration. A couple of the children had been passing by and giggled as they peered into William's office. He closed the door on their prying eyes and situated himself behind his desk again. He repeated every day that he wasn't Grell's darling, but he seemed to be the only one who believed it.

))((

"There is a house in New Orleans
They call the Rising Sun
And it's been the ruin of many a poor boy
And God, I know I'm one."

))((

William opened his eyes. He couldn't recall dreaming but he was suddenly wide awake and his heart was racing. He groped for his glasses and put them on. A quick evaluation of the room told him nothing was out of sorts there, but he was still stricken with a sense of urgency, of panic. He got up and pulled his robe over his pajamas, trying to shake the hair out of his eyes at the same time. Why did each second feel so precious?

He put on his shoes without knowing where he was going. His instincts were screaming that something was wrong. It was worse than the feeling he'd got when the nurse, Larieta, came running towards him the night Alois killed himself. He made a rare decision to follow his gut and took the stairs two at a time until he reached the street. There was a smell in the air that made him taste bile in the back of his throat. Like something cooking? No...something burning.

Burning. He staggered to a halt for an instant, then his legs were moving and his body seemed to be propelled with more adrenaline than it could withstand. His orphanage, his children, his…

"Grell!" he shouted as though he could be heard from this far away.

He didn't know how he could be certain that it was the orphanage ablaze, that the smoke he saw rising from the next block was from that very building, but he didn't have a doubt in his mind. He heard people shouting before he rounded the corner. When he came to a stop, his worst nightmare played out before him.

The wood was already collapsing. Smoke poured from the windows. He heard screams from inside, and in a single moment, his carefully assembled world shattered.

Hands tried to grasp him but he ran past the crowd into the flames. He didn't try to entertain the hope that Grell had gone home after he left, the doctor had been working even more than him since Alois, trying to monitor and counsel the children. Grell had been dozing in his chair when William left. He had been asleep and William had left him there defenseless. Him and the children were all engulfed in the flames he was currently making his way through. Once more, a tragedy had befallen the place he was responsible for in his absence.

He covered his mouth and nose with his robe before the smoke could enter his lungs. There was a sea of thrashing bodies trying to find a way out, most of them covered by too thick of a cover of smoke for him to distinguish. He grabbed them by the armfuls and pushed them out the door. Some of the younger children had already been outside when he arrived, making him assume the older ones were upstairs trying to evacuate the place.

Grell's office was incinerated. There was no telling if he had been inside. William felt his throat close up from more than smoke inhalation, but he kept pushing through. There was more than one life depending on him. He ducked under a flaming rafter that nearly fell across his path and wiped his eyes under his glasses. They were almost watering too badly for him to see. He felt along the hot walls until he reached the place the stairs should have been. He felt and felt for the handrail. Had he gotten turned around?

Then he saw the planks of wood burning away. He saw what remained of the staircase, and the dozens of wide, fearful eyes looking down at it. "No..." he said through a fit of wheezing and coughing. They were trapped.

He grabbed the wall, searching for purchase, for any way he could reach them. Some were already unconscious from smoke inhalation, being supported by the kids next to them. They all watched William with expressions of unbearable hope. There were children that couldn't escape their rooms and every one of their screams ripped him apart from the inside.

He was lightheaded when he managed to reach the stairs that led up from the mess hall. He could hear the old, dry wood crackling as he climbed them but he didn't slow down until there were children in his arms. The fire seemed to have started upstairs, as it had progressed far worse up there. He emptied as many rooms as he could, getting dizzier all the while, and it wasn't until he opened the last door that he saw a flash of red that did not belong to the flames.

He tried to say Grell's name but his throat was too dry from retching. He hit his knees to see the doctor leaning over Mally, hands covered in blood. He crawled over and saw that the girl's leg was trapped under part of the collapsed ceiling...and it was no longer attached to her body. The girl was unconscious but breathing.

"Get her out of here," Grell choked.

He managed to raise his voice to a pained whisper. "You're coming with me."

"I can't walk, Will, and you'll barely be able to support her never mind carrying us both. Get her out of here before it's too late for all of us." There was a strip of metal in his hand, possibly from the frame of a bed, and his eyes were fixed blankly on the charred stump where Mally's leg used to be. William fought the urge to get sick again; Grell had cauterized the wound.

William turned Grell's face toward him. "I abandoned you once I won't do it again."

"Like hell!"

He was surprised Grell still had the strength but the doctor gave him a hard slap across the face. He had his hand pressed to his cheek, quite shocked, when Grell said, "This isn't college, Will. I needed you after graduation but now Beast needs you. Don't make me go on living knowing that her life was spared for mine. Before anything else...I'm a doctor...I couldn't live with myself..."

His voice had been breaking up steadily until finally he couldn't speak at all. He fell sideways from where he had been on his knees. William caught him and lowered him onto the floor. Parts of his hair were singed but there was enough of it for William to see what remained of a messy braid, and he was sure he was half delirious when he started trying to untangle it. All the times he had taken this small thing for granted...he had only ever rolled his eyes when Grell would habitually kiss him on the cheek for fixing his beloved hair, but now he would have sold his soul for one more flirtatious glance, one last time to be called darling.

He wrenched himself away and lifted Mally from the pool of blood left by the emergency amputation. He collapsed twice before he made it out of the door. There were voices, there was someone taking her from him. He could feel the heat of the fire but everything was dark. Hands were guiding him away, but with some last reserve of strength, he fought their grasp.

"Take her. I have to...Grell."

The fire engulfed the only door out of Mally's room just after he passed through it. He heard shouting, someone calling him a fool, but he was staying conscious by determination alone. He began to drag Grell away from the blaze spreading inward from the door. The window had shattered, and he managed to get his head far enough out for a deep breath of air. He pulled Grell toward him and curled around him, powerless to do anything except use his body to shield him from the flames. The world started to slip away until a shard of glass stabbed his leg. The pain was acute and stinging and precisely what he needed.

If someone asked him after it was all said and done, he wouldn't have been able to stay how he fought the effects of smoke inhalation and severe burns long enough to get Grell out. He only knew that at the time he had no choice but to make up for taking the easy way out after college, to accept that he had found someone's life he wanted to put before his own. There was no hard or easy way out now. Only one way.

He fell backwards out of the window with Grell in his arms. Before he lost consciousness he felt the wind whistling past his ears and knew his back was headed straight for the cobblestone street below, right where he wanted it. He hadn't been able to keep from failing everyone in his life so far, but perhaps Grell could be the first. Perhaps that red string of fate could hold them together long enough for Grell to live.

This thought offered him an instant of peace before his body hit the ground.

))((

"Oh mother, tell your children
Not to do what I have done
Spend your lives in sin and misery
In the House of the Rising Sun."