Hello there. I am Allie (otherwise known as Miss Infinitive) and you have the honor of reading my first 'published' fic. Haha, I'm actually not so sure that's really an 'honor,' but hey. I've been writing for years but have never gotten the courage to actually share with all of you lovely people until just this minute. Well, here's hoping you like me! So, without further ado—Bon Anniversaire!
Bon Anniversaire
"It isn't often that we come to the sea shore." Ciel can taste brine on his lips when he opens his mouth. The bitter wind whips at his coat, and the hat so delicately pinned into his hair threatens to tip off. The veil which covers his right eye flutters. It doesn't matter—it is only himself and his butler on this stretch of beach, all gray sand and rocky outcroppings under a dismal, overcast sky.
"Especially not in the midst of winter, Young Master." Sebastian murmurs, his polite response just loud enough to be heard over the whistle of the wind and the crashing of the waves against the shore. "Though the price for renting a seaside residence in such an off season is certainly much less than normal, I must caution you against swimming—the water will be far too cold, and the current much too strong."
"I was not planning on swimming." The heels of Ciel's prim little dress shoes sink into the sand as he walks along the water's edge. His hands are clasped behind him in the small of his back, his chin is tilted upward.
Sebastian, treading dutifully after him, arches a thin brow. "Then what, pray tell, were you planning to do by coming here, Young Master? If I may be so bold as to ask." That last part feels tacked on—like Sebastian's trying to make it obvious that he's questioning his judgment, and Ciel does not like that.
"Do you know what today is, Sebastian?" He snaps, stopping abruptly and turning so quickly to face the demon that the material of his coat snaps loudly in the wind. He pays it no mind.
"A Thursday, sir, if I recall correctly." Which he does, of course.
Ciel's teeth grind together and he can feel sand between them, and he wants to cough and spit and splutter because it feels like gravel in his mouth, but instead he narrows his eyes as he hisses, "Do you or do you not know today's date, Sebastian?"
"January the 14th." Having a direct question put to him, the butler responds promptly this time.
Sebastian notices the way the boy's gaze trains on his face, as if drinking in each artful detail for the first time. He knows what he's thinking. He knows what he's imagining. He knows what he's remembering.
"Yes." The word seems forced past those delicate lips, an exhale of breath from a clenched jaw—a glorified sigh. The winter sea-wind is making Ciel's cheeks raw and his eyes sting. They water enough so that it looks like he is crying, droplets clinging to his lashes or racing down his face only to be torn away by the gale. But Sebastian knows better.
Ciel turns away from him then and leads him along the beach until it turns rocky. They start up the bluff, but when Ciel begins to trip in his high heels against the water-slicked stones, Sebastian takes his hand and helps him remain steady, and they walk side-by-side after that until they reach the very top—a cliff with a sheer drop to the ocean what must be thirty feet below.
Sebastian's grip on his master's hand tightens almost imperceptibly as the boy approaches the edge, sets his toes against it, looks down, expressionless. "Four years, Sebastian." He says coolly, as if it hasn't been weighing on his mind all day.
The demon places a hand on his shoulder, leans over to whisper in his ear so that for a moment he doesn't hear the howling wind or the crashing waves or the cries of storm-tossed gulls—he only hears Sebastian's voice.
"Bon anniversaire, Young Master."
French is their language of secrets. Between a moment of baited breath and an exhale, the demon takes his hands and Ciel allows himself to be lead in a diabolic waltz. The waves against the rock face and the wind whistling past their ears are their orchestra, and each step takes them closer to what may as well be the edge of the earth, eyes locked and feet synchronized and spines skeleton-straight.
And then Ciel lets go.
And he falls.
And he doesn't hear anything until the water roars in his ears. The taste of salt floods his mouth as water pours down his throat and in through his nose. He's choking on it. He's drowning on it. He's sinking further beneath the surface, the current pulling him under, and he thinks maybe he'll have his skull crushed against the rocks. Except he knows he won't, because there, almost before he can think of them, are Sebastian's arms.
"You do so love to court death, don't you?"
He hears his voice even though they haven't broken the surface yet—and the next thing he's aware of is spluttering up water from so deep in his throat it hurts, and the sand in his hair and all over him and his clothes sopping and his hat is long gone. He curls his left hand's fingers—still small and frail, though by all rights he's fourteen and he should have grown by now—into the gray sand and feels it dig under his fingernails and into his palm, and he doesn't have to open his eyes to know that Sebastian is hovering above him—he can feel him there, his familiar warmth, and the contract between them. His right hand reaches blindly up and finds itself wrapped around a wet woolen lapel, but not of Sebastian's outer coat—it's his tail coat. He wonders where his other coat went, but he knows the moment he feels something warm and dry being wrapped around his body, and then there are Sebastian's arms again, and he can imagine the flicker of the candles in the windows of the seashore home they've reserved, alive and well behind their barrier of glass, safe from the storm winds which would seek to gutter them.
"Or perhaps, Sebastian," he murmurs into the drops of seawater sliding down the warm, white skin of the demon's exposed neck, "death loves to court me."
The sound of a door and a sudden rush of warm air tells him they're inside. It's not a large place—not what he's used to, for certain, smaller than his London townhouse—but it's the best to be had on short notice and off-season. There's the scrape of a chair and a sharp intake of breath somewhere off to the left—a thud and a rustle of pages means that a book's been dropped to the floor.
"What happened?"
There isn't a way that Ciel can mistake Lizzie's concern and demanding for anything else.
"The young master took a tumble into the water." Ciel doesn't think Sebastian could possibly sound more wry without it being outright rude. And of course, Sebastian cannot be outright rude. There are steps against the wooden floor—Sebastian's shoes and Lizzie's as Ciel knows he's being carried into another room; his temporary bedroom, he assumes, and he knows he's right when Sebastian pauses and says, at his very best cutting-edge-of-polite, "I'll be changing his clothes now, so please wait outside for the moment, Lady Elizabeth." Then the door almost—almost, because if it did that would be rude—slams.
Sebastian does as he says. He strips Ciel of his dripping clothing, leaving him bare and shivering, seated on the edge of the bed, eyes still screwed up tight, saltwater leaking from the edges. It's a towel he feels around him first, drying his clammy skin all over, and then mussing his hair. As soon as the towel disappears he feels Sebastian urge his arms up, and when he does the familiar cotton of his nightshirt slips over his head. He reaches his hands out for the towel again, and receives it, uses it to rub at his eyes. When he's satisfied, he opens them, eyelash by eyelash. The first thing he sees is Sebastian's smile.
"You enjoy making trouble for me on this day especially, don't you my lord?" The demon chuckles listlessly, an eye patch—plain, white, medical—dangling from between ready fingers. Ciel tilts his head in acquiescence, and Sebastian slips it on, adjusting it so that it sits comfortably across his eye, and does not rumple his drying hair.
The click of Lizzie's heels and the sigh of her petticoats can be heard in the hall. She's shifting back and forth, no doubt, anxiety writ all over her pretty, malleable features. Even muffled, her voice is shrill from the other side of the door. "I want to see him. Let me see Ciel!"
It only takes a quick flicker of eyes for Sebastian to ask him. Ciel nods. Sebastian turns the knob and the door swings open, and Lizzie makes quick work of reaching the bed, hands reaching for Ciel's, which are folded loosely in his lap.
Before she can speak, though, Ciel assures, "I'm fine. I'm not hurt. In fact, I doubt I will even so much as catch a cold."
Lizzie's lips purse, and there's a certain hesitancy to her movements that indicate perhaps she wants to do something other than just stand there, but for once her mind simply can't quite push her body forward. "When you came in, Ciel," she says instead, "I thought—"
"The worst?" Ciel scoffs. "Impossible. Sebastian was with me." And he would never let dinner go to waste. A quick glance to the demon finds him folding both towel and sopping garments.
He speaks aloud when he says, "Sebastian, bring us tea," but the real conversation is had elsewhere—between red eyes and a blue one, with chilled skin and a still-beating heart, and the way Sebastian's black hair still hangs lank and wet around his face, the way his suit is shedding drops of ocean on the floor. "After you clean yourself up, of course."
The words are familiar—"Yes, My Lord."—as is the bow. But Sebastian and Ciel don't usually look at one another like that, do they? Lizzie places a hand on Ciel's knee and the boy breaks away from whatever sort of mental conversation he was having with his butler. She searches the young Earl's single eye for something, and there is something, but figuring out what that something is...well, that is another matter entirely.
She supposes it has something to do with the way Sebastian pauses, one gloved hand on the doorjamb, and she thinks she sees the outline of something through the wet white fabric, but she isn't really sure what it could be.
"Happy anniversary, Sebastian."
That's what Ciel says before Sebastian goes, like a dismissal. But even if Ciel won't tell her, Lizzie is determined to find out what inscrutable thought lingers in his eye when he looks at Sebastian's watery footprints.