This ficlet first appeared on the Black Butler forums in the Thursday Crack Ficlet "Love Confession" thread.
Ahh, it's done. My little Phipps and Grey ficlet wherein I assume a lot of things and make up some things to account for certain personality idiosyncrasies like Grey's fear of deep, dark places (see the latest Manga arc). It doesn't spoil anything in the manga, so if you don't know anything about Grey or Phipps you might still enjoy this. Ahem. Of course...I do assume..um...some other stuff, if you know what I mean. _;;
-CaladriaHaru
"Hold me in the Darkness"
"Hmmm. A bottle of red or a bottle of white?" Charles Grey's cinder eyes lit up and he turned from the large bowl sitting before him on the kitchen table to the white-clad figure standing impassively, arms folded, in the doorway.
"Red wine for leftover kidney pie," Charles Phipps responded immediately and then sighed. "Grey, your midnight snacking habits are running out of control."
"It's not midnight, it's 2am," the younger butler responded casually as he fished around for a fork to consume the leftovers he had discovered in the cooler, "and this snack was prepared for me specifically, so it isn't like I am doing anything wrong."
Charles Phipps raised a blonde eyebrow and fixed his counterpart with a slightly disapproving frown. "If I recall correctly, you bullied the chef into making you midnight snacks so that you would let him sleep instead of forcing him up nightly to create them for you."
"That's right," Grey said around a mouthful of kidney pie, "and you promised to stop giving me the guilt-trip thing if I let him sleep at night, so there is no problem." He licked the back of his fork ungraciously and grinned. "But now I want a proper snack, which means I want a proper wine to go with it and you know about everything that is proper..."
Standing at something of an impasse, Phipps couldn't help but sigh again. The Earl of Grey was like a mouse: he was as grey as his namesake from the color of his hair and eyebrows to the tint of his eyes, he was small and quick, could be anywhere in an instant, and he could eat a person out of house and home in a matter of days. Even the cut of his hair resembled a grey mouse's sleek little tail fluttering behind him as he darted curiously from place to place. And, like a mouse, Grey was incredibly adorable...until he was sinking his tiny sharp teeth into his prey as he was doing now.
In answer to Grey's thinly-veiled order to fetch up the alcohol, Phipps crossed the kitchen and stood at the door leading to the wine cellar. "If you are so insistent, then why not help yourself to the wine as you do everything else?"
Charles Phipps allowed himself a small smile as Grey stared at the door, an expression of dread halting him mid-chew. He gazed from the door, dimly lit from the one candle Phipps had brought in, to his partner, realizing he was being maneuvered on purpose.
"Don't want to," he drawled as if his heart hadn't just skipped a beat. Even Charles Phipps, a man whose body he knew as well as his own, looked positively ghostly in his white butler's outfit as he stood at the very maw of Doom.
"You don't want to because you are still afraid of the wine cellar," Phipps said gently, but not without an air of incredulity, knowing full well how such a statement would be received.
"What? I am not afraid! Really, Phipps, you can be so ridiculous sometimes," Charles Grey shoveled in a mouthful of kidney pie and turned away in a childlike display of displeasure and denial.
"If you aren't afraid, then prove it," Phipps pushed. Honestly, if Grey was going to have him traipsing around Buckingham Palace at all hours than he was going to extract some entertainment from him in return.
His taunt had the desired effect, of course. Grey slammed his hands onto the table and hunched over the bowl, his shoulder blades rounded giving him the appearance of a cat hissing, fur standing on end.
"Fine!" He replied, a little too loudly, "then I will go and get the stupid wine since you've gone and made it so unbelievable." Grey emphasized the last word, abandoned his fork, swiped the candlestick, and strode to the door with bravado, his sword frog clinking airily against his belt.
He stood at the door and scowled. Phipps bowed his head, unlatched, and opened the door.
The door which, for all intents and purposes, now yawned into hell itself. A cool, slightly musty breeze escaped, guttering the candlelight momentarily to send unearthly flickering along the walls.
Despite the elapse of a few moments, Charles Grey refused to move.
His partner felt the brief amusement at Grey's discomfort dissolve as he witnessed a haunting memory replay and burn behind the smaller man's cinder-stained eyes.
"Grey, that was three years ago," he began softly, sympathetically, knowing that such a tone would only be tolerated because it was him. "There are no traitorous ghosts there now. You really must get over it."
Grey winced in an uncharacteristic moment of weakness.
Phipps stared back down into the wine cellar, the minutes and years rolling back to that night, to a time when he and Grey were new to each other and had just begun to train for the elite positions they both now held.
It was Charles Phipps who had carefully investigated a series of clues and traced the mystery to its source, but it was Charles Grey who had dashed down into the wine cellar to confront the assassin who had infiltrated the palace and threatened their beloved queen's life. It was Grey who had thrown himself into danger, an action he had just about trademarked, and it was a very young Charles Grey who, in the process of nearly losing his life in the complete darkness of the cellar, killed a man for the first time.
Charles Phipps had found his partner by the light of a candle which he had quickly struck to follow him. The corpse of the assassin darkened a corner of the cellar, and the amber light of the flame illuminated the pool of blood running through the creases in the wooden boards like fine Merlot under the too-still body of the fifteen-year-old Grey. In that moment, Phipps had feared the worst. Cradling Grey to his chest, not even thinking about the crimson on his pristine white uniform, he desperately called him by his first name.
"Charles. Charles!"
Grey gasped wetly and clutched at Phipps' coat front as if it was the only thing keeping him from being dragged into hell...his eyes were watery from pain and fear as they latched upon him.
Standing upon the precipice of that memory, both men regarded each other without any defenses; their lives and feelings had changed dramatically that night.
"Things come at me in the darkness," Grey said quietly, as close as he would ever come to an admittance of fear of the unknown, even to the one who knew him best.
Phipps took a deep breath, releasing himself from the memory of the fear he too had felt as he watched his partner's lifeblood disappear into the gloom. "I believe you are the most frightening thing in the darkness now, Grey."
"Flatterer," Grey quipped, the corners of his mouth curling slightly.
Phipps was somewhat relieved to hear a note of his partner's usual bravado. "Are you getting a bottle of red or not?"
Charles Grey stared into the abyss and then turned to his counterpart, "Phipps, I'll love you forever if you go down with me." The grin he flashed was completely inappropriate as he reached out to gently tug a length of decorative black cording hanging at Phipps' chest.
"You say that every time you want a bottle of wine," Phipps reminded him patiently, but didn't push away the knowing touch.
Clearly taking his inaction as a partial victory, Grey's fingers tightened around the cord and he began to pull with strong insistence. "Yes, but you promised you would be part of my...therapy,"
Phipps was careful to cover the action of swallowing hard by reaching for Grey's wrist. Once it was secured he deftly pressed the other young man into the door jamb until there was scarcely an inch of space between their chins.
"Grey, either the 'therapy' isn't working or you are taking advantage of my sympathetic nature when it comes to your idiosyncrasies," he said in a low voice.
"Either way, you haven't presented a reason for me to stop yet," Grey pointed out with a mischievously childlike grin that bordered on lewdness. "Come on, Charles," he began, using as much friction as possible between them before taking the first step onto the cellar steps with Phipps' cord tightly in hand, pulling the taller man along like a long-suffering mastiff, "perhaps while we're down here I'll find something you can enjoy too," he promised warmly.
His heart trembling at the sound of his first name on Grey's lips, Phipps gave in and obediently followed his partner down into the concealing darkness below.
FIN