Work Text:
Tik… tok… tik… tok…
“I’ve got it!”
Grell stands up, waving her paperwork in the air as her voice vibrates through the otherwise empty office building. This late after hours, the lights are dimmed, and there’s an inexplicable stillness that gives its occupants the sense of being more dead than usual. She hops out from her desk, bolting to the only other person left in the room.
“Oh William dear, I’ve finished that post-mortem report you needed from me!” She exclaims proudly, slamming the packet of papers onto her supervisors desk.
Will, slumped over his desk with his face resting on his hand, looks up at her slowly. His hair is even more rumpled than usual, and his tense looking eyes bear a dark purple shadow under them. He’s exhausted. After a moment of incredulous staring, he sighs, looking up at clock.
“And not a moment too soon. Look at the time,” he says, and Grell follows his gaze. 7:49 pm. Oof. “If it weren’t for your slovenly work, I could have been out of here two hours ago. Now I’ll have to assess and file this, it’ll be at least another twenty minutes.”
“Well don’t fret my darling!” Grell says happily, leaning forward over Will’s desk until their faces are mere inches apart, “You know I’ll stay here and keep you entertained while you finish up!”
“Which will only make it take longer,” Will returns snidely, “honestly, if you absolutely must stay I would prefer you do so silently.”
Grell straightens up, crossing her arms and pouting. “Ah, well, if that’s how you’re going to be then I’ll just go see Ronald until you’re done. He’s stuck doing security tonight as recompense for that stunt with his scythe and the Dixie cups, I think I’ll pop in and pay him a visit!”
“Very well,” Will says, already consumed with his analysis, “I’ll come find you when I’m finished and walk you back to your dorm.”
“Oh, I know!” Grells eyes light up in faux-realisation, slamming one fist against her other open palm, “Why don’t you come with me? That way Ronald and I can occupy each other and you don’t have to be so all alone!”
Grell hears a soft growl escape Will's throat, but he quickly stands up.
“If it’ll stop your incessant chatter then fine, but it would be best if we bring refreshments, don’t think I didn’t notice you skipped your lunch break today.”
“You skip your lunch break every day!”
“Rooonaaaald, sweetheart!” Grell sings, turning into the open door of the security office. It’s dim, three rows of small, boxy black crt screens assaulting the small room with white light. Ronald sits closest to the door, leaning back in his seat with his arms crossed behind his head and his feet propped up on the desk. He turns curiously to the door.
“Grell! Will!” He shouts, instinctively turning toward them- and immediately going tumbling backwards, falling flat on the ground. He quickly scrambles up, dusting off his coat. “Ah- I mean, Mr. Spears! What are you two doing here so late?”
“Someone, couldn’t submit their paperwork in a timely manner,” Will says, brushing passed Grell and Ronald to drop a white parcel box onto a nearby table, “so we both, are stuck here until it’s properly revised and filed.”
“Eh, well that’s just too bad,” comes the voice of Eric, turning around in his seat, “say, what’s you got in the box?”
Will flips the lid open to reveal roughly a dozen small croissants, Grell adding a pitcher of juice.
“Oh hello!” Eric whistles, getting Alan’s attention from the other side of him, “Mummy and daddy bringing you treats, Ronnie?”
“Stop it!” Ronald and Grell cry in unison.
“Just something to hold us over, seeing as our work has extended so late into the evening,” Will says, holding a chair out for Grell before sitting next to her, “Anyone’s free to take one, but no more than three.”
Ronald and Eric both reach into the box simultaneously, their hands battling each other to grab the first croissant.
“Got it!” Eric declares triumphantly, holding his croissant in the air. Ronald pouts, grabbing the next one and shoving half of it in his mouth at once. “Nicely done, Spears.”
“Mmphyelph!” Ronald agrees, as he and Eric fumble into seats at the table, Alan not far behind, “these are top of the pops!”
“They’re… alright.” Alan responds, unimpressed.
“Well it’s better than watching the picture-boxes,” Eric chimes in.
“Uuugh, I know!” Ronald groans, letting himself collapse forward onto the table, “I’m bloody exhausted! Those things burn my eyes, like looking directly at the sun!”
“I think that would be preferable to this,” Alan agrees.
“Anything would be preferable to this!” Ronald whines, before darting his eyes toward Will and cringing at his stern glare. Sorry, he mouths.
“I’d rather blow me brains out again than be here,” says Eric.
Ronald chokes on his croissant.
The whole table erupts into laughter as William’s eyebrow twitches.
“Oh, I see how it is,” Ronald says challengingly, “yeah, I’d rather be sitting in an electric chair than doin’ this!”
“I’d rather be swinging from a rope somewhere!” Grell joins in, sticking her tongue out and rolling her eyes back, her performance met with another round of laughter.
“Would you four quiet yourselves?” Will says sternly, “At this rate you’ll wake up the entire exhumation division.”
A moment of silence, then Ronald breaks into tearful laughter.
“Was that a joke!?” He squeezes out, Alan hiding his snickering behind his hand.
“Ey, didn’t think you had a funny bone, Spears,” Eric gives in.
“Izzat how you did it then?” Ronald chirps, turning his attention back to Eric.
Across the table, Will’s hand curls up into a tightly clenched ball.
“Hm?”
“Offed yourself?”
“Oh, yeah,” says Eric, “Just quick and easy, y’know? No faster way out than that. Wanted it to be quick and painless.”
Ronald presses his lips into a tight line.
“But is it… really painless?”
“Oh, no, not even a little bit. Yours any better?”
“Er, well I-“ Ronald leans back, bracing his arms behind his head, “I downed a bottle of gin, and I went for a swim. It was sort of… warm, I guess.” He adjusts his glasses, then leans back over the table. “What about you Grell, you’ve gotta have a good story.”
“Who, me?” Grell asks, innocently batting her eyes, “Well, if you must know I died of… a broken heart,”
Ronald and Alan groan, while Eric boo’s her.
“Yes, I remember it like it was yesterday!” Grell exclaims, hands clasped under her jaw and eyes growing big and watery with fondness, “my lover and I had rendezvoused for the last time, and I was in a pit of despair! I was assailed by constant prejudice at the time and I knew I’d never find another love! So, in an act of burning passion, I took a letter opener and I stabbed my-“
“That’s enough,” Will interrupts, reaching out to grab Grell by the wrist, “I think you’ve painted quite the picture already.”
Grell sheepishly relaxes, gently pulling away from William.
“Well what about you Ronald? Why did you do it?”
“Oh, er,” Ronald rubs the back of his neck, visibly cringing, “Ah, there was this girl, y’see,”
Grell lights up. “Young love! How picturesque, you must have been living a fairy-tale!”
“She was the apple of my eye, just adored her.” He says, “But my folks didn’t think she was cut from the right cloth, told me to get rid of her, and I didn’t. Me mum and dad, they disowned me, kicked me out on the street. An’ when I went to crash at her place, well, she wouldn’t open the door.
“I’d just lost everything, y'know? Looking back, it was probably a pretty hasty decision, I probably could’ve figured something else out if I’d knocked on some mates doors…”
“It was a mistake.” Will cuts in, “you had your whole life ahead of you and yet you foolishly washed it down the drain over impermanent conflicts.”
Ronald looks down at the table, shoulders drooping. He nods, dumbly. “Yeah, it was a mistake,” he pouts.
“Well don’t badger the poor sod over it!” Eric says defensively. “Don’t you think he’s bein’ punished enough?”
“What was your reason?” Ronald asks, then, sheepishly looking up at Eric.
“Oh, debt,” Eric says casually, “Racked up a nasty chit takin’ out loans and rollin’ dice, couldn’t throw a stone in London without hittin’ someone I owed money to. The only other option at that point was prison, and I’d already been in and out which was how the whole thing got started anyway. Thought best to start over with a clean slate. Oi, Alan” he nudges his friend on the shoulder, “You never said how you did it.”
“Medicine,” Alan says passively, “I was very ill, it was a better alternative than what was to come.”
“Wait, that counts?!” Grell shrieks, “but you were going to die anyway! How come you get punished for that?”
“All life is valuable, Sutcliffe,” Will interrupts dryly, “even if there’s only a month, a week, a day left. He still declined what was given to him.”
Eric clenches his jaw, glaring holes into Will’s head.
“And what about you, Spears?” He asks coldly, “You’re the only one who’s not gone. What reason could you have for snuffin’ the candle that was so. Bloody. Good.”
Will adjusts his glasses.
“It’s of no consequence, I highly doubt knowing my history will help you improve your job performance, and it isn’t going to make our work go any faster. Honestly, if you’re hoping for leverage you’ll have to try harder than that.”
“Well if you’re not gonna tell us how you did yourself in, you could at least tell us about when you got The Gift,” Ronald whines. Eric’s eyes go wide,
“Hey, yeah, that story’s a legend!” He says, straightening up, “Everyone knows about it but you never say nothin’. They say it was a fuckin’ mess. Forget buying the cow, you must’ve got given the whole bloody farm-“
Without warning, Will shoots up from his seat, his chair screeching unpleasantly against the floor and it’s pushed backwards.
“I’ve finished my assessment, I need to file this.” He says, his voice breaking slightly, then he’s gone from the room before they can blink.
After a deafening silence, Grell is the first to move.
“Ronald I’m surprised at you!” She snaps, teeth bared, “You should know better than to bring up something so personal, and to your superior no less! I would report you to HR for this were I of that mind!”
She gets up from her chair, slamming her hands down on the table. “You should be ashamed of yourself, now sit and think about what you’ve done!”
When Grell finds Will, he is standing at the filing cabinet adjacent to his desk, hands shaking as he frantically rifles through an accordion folder.
“William!” She calls after him, stopping a few feet from his desk and putting her hands on her knees briefly to catch her breath. “You… you ran out of there so quickly you.. you.. you left without having a croissant!”
She waves her fist, fire soaring from her heart as she speaks. “I knew those filthy ingrates would hog all the snacks! I tell you the audacity of those underlings! I’ll have them reimburse us tenfold and on top of that to be so disrespectful and callous, and.. and, er..”
Her steam finally runs out, hovering there awkwardly for a moment as she watches him stand there, holding a Manila folder in his hand and staring right through it, frozen like a statue.
And then,
“I… jumped.”
A moment passes.
“Oh, William!” Grell cries, once again burning steam, ”How daring of you! No wonder you have no fear of heights, you’ve already conquered and commanded them! They say that when a person jumps, in the moments before they hit the ground they experience a liberated epiphany! The weightlessness, casting aside the shackles of our earthly bodies, an enlightened ecstasy! It’s a euphoric rush of absolute freedom, even if only for a moment!”
She moves to his side, closing any distance between them. “Tell me, what was it like? Was it invigorating? Intoxicating?”
“It was… rapturous.” Will says, voice humble, “Honestly, it’s one of my most cherished memories.”
“…It means the world to me,” Grell says, then, her voice unusually quiet, “that you would trust me with this.”
“Don’t be absurd, we’ve been together from the start, to intentionally keep it from you would be nonsensical.”
“Still-
“-now get your coat, I’ll walk you back to your dorm.”
“Goodness, it’s cold! I feel like the wind is blowing right through me!”
The sky around them is dark as they walk the cobblestone paths of the Shinigami Campus, Grell holding fast to William’s offered arm.
“Haven’t you noticed?” William drones, “We get fall in the summer now, and winter during the fall.”
“Oh, yes! The seasons move up a week every year!”
They stop in front of one the countless brick buildings that litter the hilly ground, a door with a large brass handle and keyhole blocking their entry.
“Well, this is me,” Grell says, “would you like to come in?”
“I think it would be best if I got some sleep, at some point,” Will declines.
“Oh, get your mind out of the gutter!” Grell teases, “I only meant for some tea!”
“That’s not what I-“ Will gives up, sighing. “Another time.”
“I hope the boys didn’t upset you too terribly, William,” Grell says, then, brow furrowed, “but you should know you don’t need to be so private about these things! You know we’re all brothers and sisters in the Shinigami order, you won't be ridiculed or judged, we’re all in the same boat!”
Will looks away for a moment, adjusting his glasses.
“You have to understand,” he says, finally, “My death,.. my.. suicide, it wasn’t like all of yours.”
“Wh- Ah-“ Grell stutters, flustered. Finally, she nods her head, eyes closed and says, “…Yes Will, I understand.”
Will begins to turn away, readying to begin the trek to his dorm building, when Grell catches the crook of his arm in her hands. He turns a quizzical look back toward her.
“Did you like bird watching?” She asks hoarsely, “When you were alive?”
Will continues to stare at her incredulously.
“I caught you feeding breadcrumbs to those pesky grackles after work on Thursday.” She explains.
Will hesitates for another moment, then says, “Yes, we had a large garden and it was always filled with robins and dark-eyed junco’s that would come to pick the seeds off the ground. I always made sure they had clean water to bathe in and long stems to take shelter in. It was… a peaceful way to pass the time.”
Grell nods, grinning. “You should get a bird feeder! A big one, for your window! That way you can make friends with them when you’re off- or at least, when I don’t keep you at work all night that is!”
Will looks up, as if he has to think about it.
“Yes, I suppose I could do that. The grackles aren’t so bad, you know, once you get used to their squawking. They have such lovely iridescent feathers.”
“I’ll take your word for it!” Grell laughs, turning toward the door. She procures a key from her vest, and rams it aggressively into the lock. As she fiddles with the door, she turns to him one last time, waving her floppy coat sleeve.
“Good night, Will!”
“Good night, Grell,” Will says, only after she’s closed the door.