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William had been fired.

Well, that was strictly true. There was no 'fired', no 'termination'; Reapers could resign, but they could not be terminated, particularly since the batches of new Reapers were doing not-so-well at the Academy and money was tight and lots of other little issues – the point was, William wasn't going to be there at all, and they'd sent some other man in his place.

He was tall and thin and narrow, like a shadow that had been demonically-bound to his funeral suit. His glasses were huge and thick, rimmed in half-an-inch wide tortoiseshell plastic, and his hair flat and boxy and pasted to his equally flat and boxy head. The corners of his mouth seemed to be pinned to the undersides of his cheeks.

Grell couldn't stand him. He could've walked through the door grinning and waving flowers, but it wouldn't change a thing; it wasn't his William that had the largest office at the very end of the hall, and that couldn't do! Who knew what they were going to do to poor Will once his career here was finished? Grell had heard particularly nasty rumours of what happened to Division Heads who couldn't manage their section properly – it did involve a pay cut, of course, and probably re-training... Will would hate going back to the Academy, particularly with children there. Besides which, this new man was taking his place. This office wouldn't be the same without Will.

So he'd whined and he'd pleaded and he'd specifically begged – Ophelia did come in handy for more than just reaping – the others to help him.

Grell Sutcliff smirked to himself as he gave the chainsaw a quick pat on its silent blade.

Oh, that new boy didn't know what was going to happen.

. . .

The London division was a legend around Head Office. A seemingly impossible group of individuals, there'd been more rule-breaking than any other branch – in the 'Infraction' department, reports for the London branch were piled up into two separate columns. The only other place with such a vast number of complaints was the Grecian branch, but they'd always been a bit more curious than most. Gods reaping gods did give the former an ego, particularly when it came to dealing with humans.

Mark Whittemore didn't know what was so special about the London division – it was London. It was rainy, it was cold, it was very depressingly normal. There was no reason for so many rules to be broken; privately, he suspected the division head, William Spears. He'd never really liked him, particularly since that one joint mission he'd shared with him and his partner in the summer of 1789.

Took him forever to get the blood out of his hair.

Obviously, he was a bad influence on the team. That would stop today. From now on, there'd be no more rule-breaking at the London division; and he was prepared to use a bit of Head Office-sanctioned kindness to reach his ends. Everyone responded well to kindness; it was a trait that William hadn't had, unless kindness could be applied to 'cutting barbs'.

The London division was accessed through a series of abandoned places about town – it had been one of his better ideas, implementing a couple of hidden walk-through zones to get to the office; he'd received a commendation for it. London was just so vast and so heavily crowded that it seemed silly to have just the one point – particularly if that point was in the East and the collection at the other end. Before he'd come along, there'd been just one spot, in an unused alleyway. This system was much better.

The little pocket world was identical to the outside London – there was an office building and a residential building and, most recently, a hospital. The London division had suffered enough problems with injuries that it seemed to make more fiscal sense just to build them one there, where it wouldn't bother the other branches or Head Office. The office itself was a collection of war-scarred stone, blackened industrial black by smoke, and a series of rickety wooden staircases the custodians were constantly repairing. Offices were musty and crowded, and the windows were small enough to prevent suicidal leaps (again, something the London division had a lot of) and showed the unappealing view of snow, residential buildings and the grim, knobbly spires of the hospital.

It was really just a place for work.  Nobody had to like it.

Still, Mark made a note to upgrade the paint. The bullpen looked like a brothel in that particular shade of red.

The four Reapers looked far from impressed at his entrance – the redhead watched him as though he was something particularly foul – possibly half-dead, and with its entrails hanging out – that had been dragged in on the heel of an unfashionable shoe. A tall blond had his arm around a brunette, sleeves rolled up high enough to show off, casually, work-hardened muscle; it was against the rules, but William had obviously never reprimanded him for it.

It was only the younger blond – a cheerfully-grinning youth, clearly a fledgling and without the proper, ingrained knowledge of the rules – that chirped a greeting.

"Smiling is against procedure," he reminded him tersely, and set his own Death Scythe down on the first available desk. Two or three more other Reapers trickled in from various darker corners of the office, and when the little room was in danger of becoming a fire hazard, Mark cleared his throat and spoke clearly and softly to the gathered workers.

"My name is Mark Whittemore. I'll be your new division head from now until the foreseeable future and I'll be doing things as they should be done in Head Office. I've reason to believe your previous division head was inadequate at his job."

The room bristled. The very potted plants (dead, somehow) seemed to glower at him.

"I want you to go about your work as normal; if there is something wrong, rest assured that it'll be brought to your attention. Now. Where is the Division Head's office?"

Nobody stepped forward initially. Then, the taller blond grumbled something, and drew away from the smaller brunette – to Mark's ever-lasting revulsion, he bumped his lips against his in front of a roomful of people and then stepped away from him, clearly indicating that he should follow. Waiting until the throng of Reapers parted, Mark hurried after him, and then tapped his shoulder with the point of his death scythe - an oversized pair of garden shears.

"You do know that public displays of affection are prohibited in the office, don't you?" Mark hissed, barely-contained ire in his words.

"We're not working. Nothing to reap. I don't see anything wrong with it as long as it doesn't get in the way of my job, which it doesn't." The man's polite tone was a carefully veiled explicative, Mark was certain of it – but calling him out on it would prove difficult when he was being so helpful and not-quite-hostile.

"Kindly refrain from kissing him during working hours. Such behaviours might have been tol-"

"This is Will's office," the man interrupted, cutting off his words without so much as an 'if I may'. Noting down this further insubordinate behaviour, Mark frowned at his back as the Reaper obligingly opened the door to a scrap of time-flattened carpet, a window and nothing more. He lifted a brow.

"There's no desk."

The reaper snorted, as though this was a ridiculous question. "Of course there is," he said, folding his arms across his chest. "I don't know about you, but things are done differently here in London. Your desk is up there."

And then he saw it – there, somehow suspended to the ceiling by means of some riveting or glue or very strong tape, was a desk and a chair. A box file opened, several pens in a hanging basket. Mark dimly felt his jaw hit the floor. He sputtered out a response, but the Reaper had already turned away, probably with the intention to go back to work, or so his mind hoped.

"Wait! Are you meaning to tell me that this is how the division head did his work?!" he called after him. The Reaper turned and shot him a grin, but somehow, Mark felt as though the smile was more 'at' him than 'with' him.

"I told you. We do things differently here."

. . .

The upside-down office was a bit odd, granted, but Mark wasn't a man who quit after a single day of doing something he didn't like. By the first hour, the vertigo had all but faded, and he'd grown used to wrapping his legs around the chair legs to keep from falling down. There was even a little strap from one arm of the chair to the other, to keep him from falling to the ladder below. Whatever the intention had been for the upside-down office, it wasn't as bad as he'd assumed.

No, there were worse things with the office building.

It was haunted, for a start.

His first encounter with a ghost had been quite hair-raising – the little hair he had left, anyway, which was saying something considering he wasn't as young as all the reapers here, and didn't have the same fulsome looks as they did. He'd been on his way in early in the morning, and there had the ghost been, sitting cross-legged on a desk, looking – or so he'd assumed, because the ghost had long white hair in front of his face – right at him.

"Who are you?" he'd asked. The ghost didn't look like any ghost he knew – he didn't know what the trend in hauntings was these years, but this ghost looked solid and touchable, though he hadn't tried to touch him. At first, he'd thought him another Reaper that hadn't shown up the previous day.

The ghost said nothing, but chuckled, long and low and screeching, like an owl mid-way through eating a terrified mouse.

"Who are you talking to, Sir?" Ronald Knox – the helpful blond, the one that didn't scowl as much – had chimed in. He'd carried a bag tossed over one shoulder and lipstick on his collar. Behind him, the flamboyant redhead without a gender had arched an ever-expressive brow.

"This Reaper, here."

"There's nobody in here but you, Markie, dear," Grell sighed.

The ghost's nails left grooves in the wood. Its head was angled in his direction, and there was a smile on its face that just reminded him of burning orphanages and overtime.

"No, this Reaper, here. Can't either of you see him?"

Ronald frowned. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw him exchange a look with the redhead, then settle his hip on another desk. "... You must mean, uh... Fluffy."

"... Fluffy?"

Mark's head was starting to throb. This was not a good start to the Second Day Of His New Job. Unwilling to poke the figure sitting on the desk, he turned to glare at the younger blond, who was now engrossed in slipping his overcoat from his shoulders. "What's a Fluffy?"

"It's the resident ghost. Division heads see him until something bad happens, or something..." Ronald tossed his coat over his right arm, shrugging his shoulders. His had one black button, amid a sea of white buttons. The lipstick, Mark was certain, was not Office Regulated.

However, the story of Fluffy the apparently dangerous ghost was far more interesting.

"What? That doesn't make any sense."

Mark's back was turned, or he'd have seen the 'ghost' slide a very threatening finger across his throat in Ronald's direction, then mime strangling something. Of all the names Ronald could've picked, Fluffy had to be one of the most insulting, followed possibly by Squishy. And Charles.

Ronald bit down on the inside of his cheek, widening his eyes a little, subconsciously. Maybe he just looked like a little cherub when he did it, since he'd certainly gotten away with murder before – not with Will, but Eric and Miss Grell were easy to con if he just widened his eyes a little – and maybe it would work on this bloke, too. "Hey, I've never seen him, but I think Will saw him for a while. I heard him yelling at him, once."

"... So, Will would know how to handle this... Fluffy?"

"Nobody can handle Fluffy!" Grell's loud voice shot through his head like an arrow. "Oh, it's terribly romantic, having our own ghost! He's a part of the family, although I bet the poor soul is just dying to move on, but something is keeping here, trapped in this old office... Maybe a Reaper he cared for used to work here, and he's unable to move on without visiting the place where she once worked!"

Mark sighed. The headache built a little more, Grell's words not so much 'helping' as making him with his death scythe was a pair of noise-blocking ear muffs. Resting it over his shoulder, he wandered dejectedly away from the hallway and snapped the door closed.

The Undertaker slid off the desk and pointed a threatening finger, first at Grell, then at Ronald. "If either of you call me Fluffy outside of this office..." he began, but the redhead made an impatient sound, and turned him towards the hallway.

"Go, go, you're supposed to be a figurative representation of his tortured bastard past that will, eventually, drive him insane and have him running screaming from this office!" Grell hissed.

"I thought I was just a ghost...?" The Undertaker mumbled, but left the room just the same.

. . .

Fluffy followed him around constantly.

He'd peer around shadows like a naughty dog, and he'd laugh that awful, grating-metal laugh. He sat in on meetings, and giggled until the sound felt as though it was peeling away layers of brain with every in-take of breath.

Absolutely nobody saw him.

Eric Slingby even chuckled when he mentioned seeing Fluffy. For all intents and purposes, it was as though Fluffy had become something like a part of the workforce – only a terrifying, doubt-mongering part that made Mark afraid to do his work. If it was true, and Fluffy foretold some sort of divine punishment, then he wasn't going to take any chances.

It was almost laughable how quickly he became polite to his co-workers. Almost too polite, and the sweetness of his words, he was sure, would end up sticking his teeth together. Work wasn't done on time, but prodding it along seemed to make Fluffy all the more visible.

"Ronald?"

The blond looked up from his desk.  Paperwork formed a veritable mountain around him, but the Reaper was more engrossed in tossing a pen up in the air and catching it. Mark bit his tongue to keep from commenting, and then hesitantly gestured to an office with the nameplate 'Leandro Fabiani'.

"Ah... how do you communicate with the Italian, um... exchange...?"

"Oh! Through interpretive dance."

It was his third day, and the headache hadn't stopped throbbing since three hours into day two. Fluffy hovered behind Ronald's desk – his hands were around the boy's neck, nails biting into his skin. Didn't he feel them denting his flesh?

"Through... interpretive... dance?" Mark repeated the words slowly, hoping there'd been a mix-up in communication. Ronald nodded enthusiastically.

"Yeah! There was a Reaper that spoke Italian, but, uh... he saw Fluffy," Ronald said sheepishly, "and was run over by a combine harvester. So, we speak through interpretive dance and notes. Oh, and Will used to sketch out what he wanted, too. But, if you have something urgent to tell him, you might as well just use the interpretive dance way."

Mark stared at him, unwilling to believe this latest development. Not only was his desk upside down, and a curse following him around, but now he had to dance to get a reaper to do what he was here to do. The child was fucking with him – he could feel it. Surely one of the others would have a better solution than 'interpretive dance'?

Fluffy's giggle scrubbed raw the nerves in his ears.

Interpretive dance it was.

. . .

Leandro Fabiani had seen a wealth of bizarre things in his life, particularly since coming here to work with the London division to stay close to a friend of his, but a man waving his arms about and miming writing in mid-air was far beyond even what he had seen.

His boss was hopping about like a chicken with one leg, flapping his arms as though trying to take flight. Occasionally, he'd whip his glasses off and wave them in a circle. Leandro wasn't sure, but he did think that he might be having a seizure.

He brought it up to Eric, later, in the cafeteria; Eric was the only other Shinigami who could speak Italian. "... Why is the boss dancing at me?"

"He's fucking nuts," Eric supplied, and gulped down a mouthful of coffee with a wince.

. . .

He might have been able to survive the week if he hadn't made the mistake of asking Alan what gender the redhead was. It had been a while since school – and everyone here didn't make it easier! Eric called him 'Sutcliff' and carefully avoided using pronouns. Ronald preferred 'Miss Grell' and Alan, then, used masculine terms to refer to him. It was a very confusing, delicate issue and, in the interest of diplomacy and not getting sued or injured or maimed or any number of the horrible office-related things that could happen here, he'd gone to Alan to ask him what he should call him.

He didn't trust Eric or Ronald. They had a hint of the devil about them.

"Well... most people use 'it'," Alan had said.

Calling him 'it' had been a terrible mistake.

It was the single-handedly most terrifying experience of his life. Fluffy loomed in the opposite doorway, a crumpled heap on the floor. The redhead's teeth, every last, jagged one, was so close to his face that it seemed like his vision had filled with teeth, and the way its-his-her words were ground out from between the slivers of light made his-her voice odd and disjointed, like a man midway through possession by the devil.

"I've never been so insulted in my life, how dare you call me an 'it'?! Don't you have any decency in you – any, any brains?! Isn't it clear that I am a woman?!"

His-her voice rocked with temper, and dimly, in the background, he heard the other three Reapers.

Eric was describing an event where this redhead had lost control of her-himself. Apparently, the man that he'd lost control of her-himself at had ended up faceless. "Those teeth," Eric was muttering, sagely. Mark shrank away from them.

The buzzing of the chainsaw seemed far too close for comfort.

Speaking of chainsaw, Alan's level, thoughtful voice was bobbing up and down over the coils of angry words. "I remember Jack, too. Oh, God. The cleaners were scrubbing Jack off the floors for weeks – such a mess..."

When Ronald opened his mouth to add his two cents, Mark just shoved the redhead aside and fled the building. All three Reapers, and the Undertaker, winced at the slamming of the door below. Grell, still caught up in a temperamental tailspin, switched off Ophelia and slammed her into an available shelf. "Bastard," the Reaper snarled, ignoring the pointed silence.

"Huh..." Ronald walked over to his desk and pulled out a spiral notebook. "I was so sure he'd last the week," he sighed, adding to the table a paperback novel, a stapler, a small packet of gum and a necklace with a bone on it. "You win, Alan!"

"Thanks..." Alan murmured, looking at the dubious pile of prizes on the desk.

. . .

Will returned the next day. He didn't speak about what had happened to Head Office, and his Reapers didn't explain what had made the new division head run screaming from the building and tender his resignation while burbling about ghosts, Italians and psychopaths (the last of which he understood perfectly). And though there was a lecture in store for having three days of no work finished at all, Will had to struggle, hard, to keep the smile from his face.

Eric's report had a little note on it in pencil. 'If anyone's going to be a hard-ass, it's going to be you.'

Ronald had the same thing, only in little sketches – Will couldn't read any of them quite clearly, but the general gist did read off as something like 'glad you're back'.

Alan's reports had no pencil marks on them, but he did say it in words upon entrance.

They all seemed happy to have him back – except Grell. Grell hadn't come out of his office to say 'hello' and he hadn't been seen for an entire day. He wasn't in the cafeteria, out on collections, in the abandoned office two floors down, chatting with the girl from Requisitions, at the beauty parlour or at the library. Taking a gamble, Will peeked into the last place he'd check in the event of Grell going missing – his office.

Agog, he watched the redhead bent over a stack of papers, scrawling in red pen. His hair looked as though he'd been pulling at it, his mascara was a little smudged – he looked like he'd looked when they were young, and he was actually trying to study for an exam, and it made some small place behind his heart squeeze at the acknowledgement. The day was over, and he hadn't even noticed.

Will sauntered in, taking a seat opposite him.

The redhead glanced up and grinned brightly, his eyes dancing with enjoyment. "Will! Oh, I'm so glad you're back! I missed you sooo much!"

The chair he was sitting in scraped against the floor as Grell shot out of his place and wrapped his arms tight around his neck, squeezing hard. If he had needed to breathe, he'd have found it difficult to do so with Grell's constrictive grip, but he didn't, so he could just nuzzle his face momentarily into his shoulder. Whatever had driven Mark away from his post here, Grell was probably at the very heart of it. It had his prints all over it.

"Work's been over for a few minutes," he remarked, pushing Grell back. Without thinking, the redhead settled back in his seat and went back to his writing. "What are you still doing here?"

"Work," Grell sighed. "Purposely not doing work is much harder than not doing work. I have so much to do, William, I'm going to end up working here until I'm greying at the sides!"

Privately, William thought that the only thing that Grell would never be was grey.

"I'll work with you," he offered, and left the room. He returned with a stack of pages (blank) and a pencil, and Grell quirked his lips, but said nothing.

Both of them knew that he had no work, just like both of them knew he'd spent his next few minutes doodling mathematical equations and scientific formulae.

"I'm sure that this is something you don't want brought up..." Will began, a few minutes later, "...but why exactly was my desk glued to the ceiling?"