How can you know what things are worth?

[stabilimentum]

Who: stabilimentum and masterbaiting
When: Evening before sirens, May 26th, but before Alois goes to find Ciel.
Where: Laundry room in the basement of the Phancyhive manor.
Summary: After Ciel takes out his anger on Claude (U MAD? U MAD, BRO?), Claude has to dump bloody clothes and grab some supplies for cleaning up the library. Being shot in the forehead sucks, by the

Comments

[masterbaiting]

The very first thing that sets Alois neatly into his fury is the fact that Claude clearly isn't wearing his suit jacket; nor his ribbon, which is even worse, because Alois wants to face him fully and yank on it to pull him down to eye level. He wants to breathe harshly and shriek in his face and what the fuck happened and why are you like this and it's all fucking gross

-It's too easy for him to figure the skeleton of the scenario. "Claude." Right now, he doesn't even have it in him to sound out with foreboding saccharine. "Did I catch you in the middle of chores?"

As Claude feels Alois' dusted butterfly wings anywhere and anytime, Alois can sense the tremble of the threads Claude weaves and trails around and behind him. Those threads are theirs and theirs alone: they taste like deplorable things and donut glaze, even when Alois doesn't open his mouth. That's why he knows to march down the stairs. He hates Claude for getting shot, for being so disgusting that it hadn't killed him; he's terrified because he can't help but imagine it

[stabilimentum]

At least there isn't an oozing opening in the center of Claude's forehead anymore. That gunshot wound closed on its own after a minute, skin knitting together, holes in and out plugged up. He raked squishy black brain matter out of his hair and cringed inwardly at how rancid it smelled. Everything still smells rancid to him, a memory of attempted murder. He projects sweet scents to try to cover up the would-be execution.

"Your Highness," Claude says, swallowing blood. It makes his voice thicker and wetter than it should be, like he's just indulged in a drinking contest of honey. "In a household as large as this one, there are always chores that need doing."

Such as mopping up the library of blown out blood and tissue, and making sure the carpet and wood panelings don't get stained permanently. It's going to need to be treated with disinfecting detergent, too. Demon blood isn't harmless--corruption in liquid form. He subtly swallows more blood and bits of metal, from the fragments that are still migrating away from where

[masterbaiting]

"An explanation," snaps Alois, straightaway, "for what exactly this is. Is that shit you've got on you? It must be." The blood of a demon and shit must be one and the same after all. Demons are terrible - everything about them is - and it's too inhuman, this whole situation, and Alois feels like one of Claude's hummingbirds, meant to be soothed by a promise of sugary things in the air.

Roll over, he wants to say. Play dead. Suddenly he'd like to vomit. Instead, he lifts his chin, since he's real nobility and noble people like to raise their noses high enough that they could drown in rainfall. "Face me," he demands. He hates not being looked at. It makes him want to do things to Claude's eyes that are a thousand times worse than what he did to Hannah's, but he knows that he never will and he never can. They'd pin him to the spot, trap him in the dark like a cocoon made of bat wings, and suffocate him with the intensity of sharp gold. That's what he wants, right now. Alois doesn't want to be blind.

[stabilimentum]

After dumping in a cupful of enchanted detergent, Claude spins a few dials on the dashboard and-- CLANG. The washing machine is forcefully slammed shut. With an ominous rumble, the first of its several cycles begins, and he runs his pale fingers over the cool metal exterior.

"Day into night," he says, looking up at the fluorescent lights. "Pleasure into pain." He retrieves a new pair of gloves from his pocket and pulls them on, just in case anyone else stampedes down here. "And stained into spotless."

Oh, he has a horrible headache. The pain drills straight through him, following the path of the bullet, and he cannot derive any pleasure from it. His entire body won't stop throbbing, either, as if some great and invisible hand wants to squeeze every drop of energy out of him.

"This is being a Trancy butler