The grey-haired man had a full-on manicure. A manicure. Long black coffin style nails. And this was their infamous headmaster. Primped and pressed like a drag queen just to sit an office for eight hours. Ciel stared at him like he was staring at the sun, which was ironic, given the sort of clothes the man was wearing were not beaming in the slightest. But the man was. He seemed so eager to even be in the same room as another, as if he had never had visitors before.
"You're the Phantomhive boy, yes?" He was a bit too giddy in asking, and twiddled his fingers about as he waited for the answer, "You know something? I think I knew your father. Good man, that he was. Awfully dead now though." Ciel was unsure of how to approach this, of how to approach this man or his line of questioning. He had always anticipated Weston's headmaster to be a man of great importance, a man whose words were carefully chosen and whose office did not smell like kitty litter. He was trailing off mentally now, as a result of his discomfort, longing for the familiarity of a particular sensation at his fingertips. But the sensation had been brandished by another.
"Is that all you wanted?" he now asked the detestable figure, trying to contain his annoyance, a kindness usually not granted by the likes of himself, "to confirm about my father?" It was not so easily that he masked the second bit of annoyance; the annoyance he retained upon at last recognizing the face held when that stranger spoke of the deceased. It was almost...gleeful? Ciel could attribute this to lack of sleep, sure. But that did not make the tone of voice or use of diction any less disrespectful.
Phantomhive realized now that he had gone this entire drawn out conversation without seeing the other man's eyes. He was almost certain that they were there, hidden underneath all the masses of matted fluff that he mandated a mane. Still the concept horrified him, the idea that there was even the slightest of chances of an eyeless man in his presence, smiling a toothpick-y smile despite the dreadful aroma and unnerving ambiance his person exuded.
"No. There was, there was something…" The man now fumbled cautiously over his words, as if flipping through the notebook pages of his cranium. His lengthy nails tap, tap, tapped, the square of cherry brown before him. He did not seem embarrassed to be caught in a place of unknowing, as any ordinary headmaster might have been. Instead he appeared almost amused by his own confusion, as if it were as enticing and delectable as the knowledge of Ciel's dead father. Ciel once more grew aggravated at this notion, the notion of feeling pleasured at all the wrong times and by all the wrong things. To allude that he was in a way envious of this inappropriate behavior would not be as far off as he wished it to be, though Ciel himself would never fess up to such a long. He would only stay in his madness, and further it whenever he saw a person amidst his vicinity not doing the same.
"Perhaps I can jog your memory. You're the headmaster. I'm Ciel Phantomhive. You called me to this place some time ago by means of a little freckled girl who interrupted my assignment, and then you badgered me about my dead father."
The long-locked man had a good and hearty laugh at that one. He slapped his arms wildly on the desk, which meant it took all of Ciel's willpower not to leap five feet at the abruptness of such a sound. "Assignment," he said, "there are no such assignments after Presentations! Everyone knows everything else they say in that class is just fancy talk for sit around and do nothing."
Ciel scrunched his face into his color a bit, hoping any and all underlying redness would rub itself off. He had not known that. He had taken that class to be a very serious one with major participation grades. He had even completed (and color-coded) all seventeen of the advanced level extra credit assignments. And to top all of this off, Ciel was being made to feel stupid in front of the stupidest looking man he had ever seen in his entire life.
Despite the assumed dimwittedness, the other man caught on quite quickly. He smiled a subtler one this time, something of a Sebastian smile (not that Ciel could explicitly remember and describe such a thing). "Everyone except you, I meant." Ciel would have been more offended if he had truly thought that this sort of man could ever come from a place of meanness in the first place. And it was then that his indignation began slowly to melt away into pity, pity for the headmaster's obliviousness to the true asscrack that was life. Pity for his inability to be cruel, or to say no. Pity for his incapability to handle the elaborate fixtures in a bathroom shower.
"I remembered!" the headmaster said at last, and before Ciel could question him as to what he remembered, the subject of his remembrance came bursting through the door. Again with the suddenness and the door bursting. Ciel was beginning to believe that he was the last person on the planet who knew anything of appropriate conduct.
"Is he here yet? I know you said you'd call me, but like, is he here yet?"
Ciel nearly rocketed out of each individual skin cell upon realization, his arm hairs all stood up and began crawling about like spiders across his thin frame. He considered running, despite the asthma attack that was sure to follow. He considered Conjuring a massive blade with which he could slit his throat with. He considered anything and everything that would exclude this very moment from continuing in the way that he thought it would continue. But it was too late. She saw him and came barging forward, barging like he was about to be her second door.
But homo sapiens do not make for reliable doors. So Ciel swerved opposite at the last minute, allowing her to collapse ever so keenly on the floor, smacking her body against the unswept atrocity that was any given inch of this room. His headmaster tsked at the action, though he was still smiling.
"It's not nice to treat your girlfriend like that Ciel, especially after she travelled all this way to see you."
Ciel helped her up now, grimacing at the very thought of his hand having to linger on hers for the movement to be successful. Of course, she was not so much as mad at him for avoiding her, and that only increased his loathing of her presence.
"It's okay, I know he missed me," she bubbled, and her eyes sparkled diligently upon hearing her own words. Was it possible to still be shiny after a makeout session with some weirdo's unkempt floor? Her persona reflected the fact. Ciel once more considered the Conjuring option. It's not as if she could stop him. But he knew better. He was a man, despite his size. He had responsibilities and reputation and every other frilly thing that the planet allowed. And he intended to keep it that way. So Ciel did not release her hand, and he walked Elizabeth out of that room in the gentlest strides his body would allow.
Fingers crossed that this particular visit would not last long.
This one is my least favorite I've done so far but to be fair to me, I'm a stubborn asshole who has no current access to the original copy of it (it's on a broken flash drive.) so this will have to do. I promise the next one will be amazing because I've already put a considerable bit of effort into it and it's going to be very lengthy! I'll probably get it finished tomorrow so it can be up for Christmas day. Also, thanks to my first ever reviewer for this story! You've made me very happy! I'm the proudest of my writing style for this piece by far, it reminds me more of the writing of authors I look up to. So I'm glad that someone has noticed! I was kind of worried that this story would just go unnoticed after all the shit I'm pouring into it, so thank you. I'm glad to be entertaining someone. Not that I should necessarily judge anything's worth on view count, it's just nice to have a reminder that someone's interested in what I'm putting out.
