After taking pains to double check the room number, Ciel successfully located Mister Faustus' Algebra class on the second floor.
He slowed to a casual walk, heaving a sigh of relief as he drew near to the room. According to his watch, he still had about twelve minutes to spare (the lunchroom clock must have been off). This time his bag was loaded with notebooks, loose paper, pens, pencils, and a textbook he'd already read the first chapter of. There was nothing Faustus could throw at him that he couldn't deflect.
So Ciel was relatively surprised when he discovered the door slightly ajar, and when he heard soft murmurs flowing from the room.
Instincts taking over, the ninth grader wedged himself in the doorframe and peeked into the room, observing with steady eyes.
The tall, intimidating math teacher stood at the board, copying something onto it with a black dry-erase marker. He stopped now and then to adjust his glasses, but he wasn't the one talking. No, the voice originated from the young woman sitting on his desk, a leg crossed over her knee.
"It's not like this job is permanent though," she was saying, her voice a disinterested drawl.
Mister Faustus said nothing, and Ciel took advantage of the silence to study this woman more closely. She looked vaguely familiar, yet he couldn't place her: a healthy, tan complexion, silvery hair (must have been dyed) dropping to her waist, painted lips, large, indigo hued eyes-
-And (Ciel blushed) a truly voluptuous figure.
"I mean, I doubt I'll be here long myself. I don't have the patience for teaching, and ever since Luka-"
Her pitch cracked and she interrupted herself. The silence Faustus seemed to be trying to enforce won its way, and the woman cast her gaze downward. Who was Luka? Wondered Ciel.
Slowly, the beautiful girl looked back up towards the professor. She eyed him wistfully, Ciel noted, as though searching for some sort of approval, or feedback. But Faustus ignored her, continuing to draw numbers on the board as though she hadn't spoken at all.
Perhaps they were related. It was a possibility, Ciel mused, though not a certain one. He could see no shared physical traits except a general attractiveness.
The seconds ticked by as the couple remained motionless. After a while of watching him, the woman slipped from her perch on the desk and walked up to Faustus. The Phantomhive regarded her shoes, polished black and high heeled.
She came behind him and inserted her arms beneath his, resting her face in his back.
"I miss you," She murmured, "you don't visit me as often anymore."
Ciel scratched out the siblings suggestion in his mind, replacing it with lovers. But that couldn't be it, could it? Faustus was the most detached, emotionless husk of a man he'd ever seen.
Faustus stopped writing. His hand froze in its position, still grasping the marker. Mystery girl nuzzled deeper into him, and he heaved a sigh. Reluctantly, he placed the cap on the writing utensil and set it down on the board's tray.
"Hannah-"
"Don't," Hannah sounded bitter, "I already know what you want to say and I'm tired of hearing it."
Mister Faustus' tone was biting, but he made no move to loosen her embrace, "Then you should listen the first time."
She shook her head and her arms tightened around his middle, as though she could make the words go away by pressing him.
"Hannah, we aren't together anymore."
He gave her a minute to let the statement sink in. Meanwhile, Ciel's mind was racing; he was beginning to see Mister Faustus in some new, alien light: not as a heartless devil but a tired, lovelorn man.
Soon, the professor went back to his writing. But Hannah did not give up. Instead, she rose to her tiptoes and planted her chin on his shoulder. Then she reached up to his ear and licked the back of his lobe tentatively.
For the second time, his hand wavered.
Sensing his hesitation and taking it as a cue to proceed, Hannah's lips closed around the earlobe briefly. Following that, she slid down his neck, leaving a trail of kisses as she travelled.
"Hannah…" He said again, but this time it was more of a guttural sound. A groan from the back of his throat as she started over, wrapping her hands around his collar.
Her kisses grew in fervor, and when she raised her hand to caress his face he grabbed it. With her tiny palm clasped in his, Mister Faustus turned around. Ciel could see from his vantage point in the doorway that both their temperatures had changed dramatically; the math teacher's ordinarily flaccid coloring flushed the color of wine.
And then, without warning, Professor Faustus seized Hannah's hips and covered her mouth with his own.
Hannah moaned when she could but was generally never given the opportunity to open her lips. Her lover's hands shifted along her body, almost painfully gripping the luscious curves of her abdomen. She leaned her weight against his, fastening her arms around his neck. Faustus let out a sound Ciel could not rightly classify.
Somehow, they staggered towards the desk. It was there that Mister Faustus shoved Hannah against the front and she tore off his glasses, casting them away on the table. They were forgotten in a clatter, and soon the two were making out again. Faustus bore down on her so forcefully it almost seemed as though he were trying to crush her, to mash the both of them into one being. It must have hurt, but Hannah was gasping with pleasure.
The scene only escalated from there. Ciel's own body was already blushing tremendously and he wondered how much longer they would go on before noticing him. Forget him, before noticing that class began in under six minutes. This hardly seemed acceptable classroom behavior.
"Claude," Hannah cried quietly, his face buried in the crook of her neck, "Oh, Claude…!"
No, Ciel's eyes were wide and he bit his tongue, definitely not approved classroom behavior!
The ninth grader's cheeks were so hot they could've heated the school if Hannah and Claude weren't so busy doing that themselves. Sweat popped under his armpits and the Phantomhive's mind informed him that he really should say something, lest another student appear on the spot early.
There was a split second where Ciel felt a tickling sensation at the edge of his nostril.
And then blood came in a torrent.
Ciel's hands flew to his nose, making every attempt to stop the flood. However, he realized a moment too late that this motion caused him to drop his bookbag-
Resulting in a loud, very interruptive THONK.
Claude straightened immediately and whisked around. Bizarrely, Ciel thought that despite his heated face, wide eyes and panting mouth, Mister Faustus was actually a strikingly gorgeous man.
The next thought Ciel entertained was that when Faustus finished stomping from the desk to the door, there was going to be one less Phantomhve in the universe.
"I-I-I'm sorry, Mister Faustus!" Ciel blurted, stemming his nose with one hand and wildly gesturing with the other. Claude loomed over him, lips set in a firm, livid line. "I didn't mean to stop you or anything-!"
Good god, now even Ciel wanted to murder himself. That sounded awful. That was all shades of wrong.
Shockingly, Mister Faustus did nothing. Well, he snatched Ciel by his sweater, lifted him an inch off the ground and snarled (in a strangely perfumed breath):
"You saw nothing, understand?"
But he didn't harm him. Once Ciel conveyed his agreement by impersonating a bobblehead, Faustus let him go.
"Who's there?" Hannah called over from the other side of the classroom. Ciel noted that the first few buttons of her blouse had been undone, baring the tops of her breasts.
"Er," The ninth grader stammered, caught between pretending that he saw nothing and polite abstinence.
"Oh, lunch break is over already!" The woman exclaimed, hastily fixing her shirt and hopping off the desk. She took another second to straighten her skirt, which had been pushed up around her thighs earlier.
"I have to get to the Special Ed class. I'll call you!" Was all Hannah left when she whooshed from the room.
Special Ed, Ciel ran that through his mind. He'd heard it before. Didn't Alois mention that he took a class with Miss Annafellows…?
Oh, no, the Phantomhive swallowed. Annafellows; Hannah. Hannah Annafellows. She and Claude Faustus were having an affair.
Ciel almost said it aloud when Claude asked for the value of ex, too. Except he knew that if he'd done that, Sebastian wouldn't have found enough pieces of him to bury.
-TT-
There was a certain prospect that the library was just a room that transcended space. Somehow, even though the school always buzzed with some sort of noise and at present the area was filled with the entire freshmen class, the library remained a peaceful and quiet work area.
In a way, the silence was so tactile it was uncomfortable.
But the Phantomhive put those thoughts from his mind and focused on his computer's monitor. It was telling him that the books on child psychology were left of the attendant's desk, third shelf.
With his questions answered, Ciel gathered his notebook and pencil from the computer table and rose to his feet. He grumbled to himself as he strode across the hall of paper, relating that this essay would be so much easier to prepare for if students were allowed unlimited Internet. Naturally, the network blocks permitted sites like Wikipedia and other encyclopedias, but most everything else (including, to the ninth grader's frustration, surveys and news reports) had been deemed inappropriate.
The boy was in such a sullen mood that he stalked right past the library attendant, a twitchy, sharp-featured woman with red hair. She leaned over her desk and tried to snag Ciel's wrist, but clumsiness caught her ankle and her face landed in an inkpad. The librarian groaned into the mat of black as her target marched past, a storm cloud hounding him closely.
As Ciel scanned the dusty bookshelves for the magazine bearing his precious study, his memory wandered to the beginning of the period. They'd only found their seats when Sebastian announced the assignment: a persuasive paper on the topic of remedial lessons. Are the students for it, against it, why, state your sources, et cetera, et cetera…dreadfully dull stuff it was, and Ciel had not the patience to write it. He could only wonder in stupefaction how his half-brother had the patience to read it.
So absorbed was he in his ponderings that it took the Phantomhive a minute to realize the presence beside him.
"Hey, I have something private to discuss with you."
Ciel leapt back and threw his arms in the air, nearly losing his notebook in the process. It was all he could do to keep from shrieking, though his expression was more than enough to send the librarian into a panic:
"Listen, it's not so unusual for an attendant to check on how the kids are doing during a research period!" She protested anxiously, olive eyes darting behind scarlet glasses.
"Hold on," The ninth grader frowned. Now that the initial shock was gone, he took a closer peek at the bookkeeper and perceived her strong jawbone and…fake eyelashes? "Are you…?"
The librarian of sexually ambiguous gender cut him off, speaking in quick, hushed tones, "There's a rumor going around that you and Mister Michaelis are related-"
"Are you a man?" Ciel asked disbelievingly, blush in his cheeks and revulsion in his voice.
Again, the attendant ignored the question.
"It's true, isn't it? You and Mister Michaelis are brothers?"
The reality of the attendant's sexuality threw the young Phantomhive and made him feel violated, for some reason. He bit his lip and his forehead prickled uncomfortably, but in the end Ciel could see no reason to hide the secret.
"Half-brothers," he corrected grimly.
"Whatever," the man tossed his wrist in a feminine manner, "what's important is that you're close to him."
The ninth grader's eyes narrowed and he regarded his assailant attentively. Where was this going, he wondered…
"What sort of woman does he go for?"
"Why?"
The transvestite uttered a groan of annoyance, but quickly recomposed himself, "I want to ask him out, but I don't know how to approach him."
Ciel watched as the man straightened and his features softened, flushing.
"He's so tall and intimidating," The librarian sighed lovingly, "whenever I get near him, all my words just shrivel up; I don't know what to say!"
The prickly feeling on his scalp returned and Ciel could find nothing to answer with. By now the other male was gripping himself around the elbows and appeared to be swooning.
Soon the bookkeeper came to his relative senses and leaned closer to the student, "So tell me. What does he look for in a prospective life partner?"
"Who are you, again?" Ciel asked weakly, still extremely disturbed and somewhat unaccepting of this crossdresser's interest in Sebastian.
"Glad you asked!" He giggled (an act that sent shivers up Ciel's spine), "Grell Sutcliff, proud member of the Grim Reaper Association!"
"I see," Ciel replied, though he didn't have the slightest clue what was transpiring.
Grell cleared his throat and snatched the boy's shoulders, startling him.
"Spill already! What does your brother want in a romantic relationship?"
At first, Ciel planned to warn the psycho about Sebastian's unfeeling personality and disdain for romance in general, but he quickly shut his mouth. Grell was delivering him an astonishing amount of attention; the transvestite was practically snagging every exhalation from the boy's mouth.
And so a marvelous idea took root. It spread through Ciel's mind like a fungus, dropping the perfect sentences onto his tongue and a smirk on his lips.
"Actually," He began slowly, stretching out the word for dramatic effect. As expected, Grell held his breath. "Sebastian has always been very fond of pet-names."
"Pet-names?" The attendant raised an eyebrow.
"Yes, of course," Ciel nodded, "and he absolutely loves it when people compliment his figure. Try to be original, though."
"Ah."
"Oh, silly me," the Phantomhive chuckled, genuinely enjoying threading such lies, "I nearly forgot. He adores public displays of affection, positively adores them: hugs, kisses, touching, all of it."
"Er," Grell stuttered, a wave of confusion crossing his face, "are you quite certain? I mean, from his appearance, Mister Michaelis just doesn't seem like the…well, the type-"
"Excuse me, but are you his half-brother?" Ciel challenged.
Grell redacted immediately, "Oh no, I believe you. You're right, I'm sorry."
"Good. I'll tell you now, though, he's going to pretend he doesn't like it. He'll push you away, rebuke you, and he might even smack you a bit. But don't get discouraged; he's a whore for attention."
"Understood," Grell grinned, "My, my, this is perfect! Here I thought he'd be a stuck up little professor, but now I see we're basically the same. He could be my soul mate!"
"Yes," Ciel smiled as well, glad to indulge in the happiness, "Yes, he could be. He's been so lonely lately…"
Grell blushed madly and steam seemed to shoot from his nostrils.
"My poor noodlekins, lonely!" He exclaimed, spinning and dancing about as he began his quest for Michaelis' affections, "not for long, he's not!"
The saying was true. Revenge was impeccably sweet. And how fitting indeed, as it was through their very relation that Sebastian humiliated Ciel in the first place.