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Division Supervisor and Head Manager for the London Branch of the Shinigami Dispatch Association, Mr. William T. Spears stared up at the glaring white blur of the ceiling above him. He was flat on his back and without his much needed and very important glasses. The dim florescent light fixture seemed to take the reassuring rectangular shape of the ones found in his very own branch building, and those greyish smudges were definitely the outlines of the ceiling tiles hung only in the medical bay.

He swallowed dryly against the pounding in his head and became aware that he was only clothed in the drafty white cotton hospital gown afforded to patients on the rare occasion a working reaper would need to become a guest of the infirmary. His hand resting over his stomach could feel the ridges of bandages through the thin fabric. Pale and slightly gaunt in countenance with uncombed raven hair falling in his eyes, William still held his usual serious and business like demeanor in place as he listened intently for any sounds nearby that could tell him the hour or the day.

Testing a shaky breath he found it still came with a sharp pain spiking in his gut and his long fingers twisted in the light blue sheet draped over him. He decided not to breath again unless someone came by he needed to speak to. The effort of turning his foggy head didn't show him any signs of that happening any time soon. From the indistinct blurs around him he could tell he'd been placed in a private recovery room with the blinds drawn and the door firmly closed.

For a moment William stared hard at the round copper smudge that simply had to be the door handle. Some part of him expected it to turn. Expected it to be thrown open with a slam and the usual peal of off key giggling and sing song call of his name, or rather an annoyingly childish variant of his name along with ridiculous terms of endearment and professions of true love and truer lust.

The seconds dragged on in silence. There was no noise, no flash of loud flamboyant red bursting in on him and bringing the rest of his usual daily after life with it. A slow and heavy feeling of dread settled in Williams stomach making the physical pain there dull in comparison.

Grell Sutcliff should be here by now.

He was starting to recall vague details about the previous evenings assignment, he had a good sense of what had happened after he had gone down. William knew he was the only one who had been injured with Grey Metal, his very own death scythe to be precise. It was one of the only things that could kill a reaper and it would leave him healing as slowly as an ordinary human from his wound with a permanent scar to remind him of his nearly fatal mistake.

Young Ronald Knox had been his partner on that particular mission. At the end of a double shift with overtime they had both been exhausted and looking forward to clocking out. It was just another late night death in a grimy back alley of Londons slums. Neither had been expecting demons. The Junior reaper had tried to put up a good defense after William had been taken by surprise and pinned to a wall by his own scythe. Thankfully Ronald had been knocked through a nearby building and stayed unconscious. Surely he was just fine by now. If William had made it back in his condition, Knox must have too.

Grell had been injured in the fight. It went without thinking, his style was simply too reckless and he seemed to enjoy taking a hit sometimes as much as giving one. Grell wasn't even supposed to be there but he had shown up just in time to see Ronald sent flying. William didn't even know what Grell had wanted... well, he probably did, it was the end of their shift after all and he'd been pestering William all week for a "romantic" dinner date.

William ran a heavy hand through his bangs and tried to think through the parts of the fight he had been able to see. The roar of Grells chainsaw had been instant. As soon as he arrived he'd jumped into the fray. He knew the redhead had taken far more damage than he had but it had been mundane in nature. Normal blows that began healing with a reapers preternatural regeneration abilities as soon as they were made. Combined with Grells high tolerance for pain he could and did keep fighting even with broken bones and ruptured organs. Once the scarlet spray of his enemies blood had caught the insane glint in his eye the red reaper was like a bull charging a cape and nothing could hold him back from the violence he craved.

William had a moment of shame wash over him, that he'd needed to be saved. On one hand it was embarrassing that it had been Grell who was a sorry excuse for a reaper on his best days, but on the other it was also good it was Grell because they were old friends who had trained at the academy together. The redhead would never hold it against him, it wasn't even the first time he'd saved him in a fight. It was strange in a way, that when things really mattered, when it was actually down to life and death, the most unreliable and unpredictable reaper he'd ever known was still Williams first choice to turn to and the only one he'd trust with his life. Grell had always been there.

So where was Grell now? And more importantly to William, how long had he been in the infirmary laid out like a limp herring while his department was left to run itself? He sucked in just enough air to let out a groan at the thought of all the paper work and chaos piling up without him. And Grell in the middle of it all causing even more trouble.

Suddenly William felt like closing his eyes and just going back to sleep.

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