Title: Wednesday's Child
Series: Weiss Side B
Genre: Angst/General
Rating: G
Warnings: None
Status: Complete
Characters: Yuki and Michel
Summary: Yuki's thoughts on birthdays.
Notes: Today is my birthday, so I was thinking about anime characters who don't have birthdays and how we make up days for them for this reason or that reason. This came to mind.
I think Yuki would have been born on a Wednesday. "Wednesday's child is full of woe," after all.
Yuki didn't know when his birthday was.
This had never really been all that important; there was never enough to money to celebrate the children's birthdays anyway. At the end of every year, Alison had bought a cake at the bakery down the block and they had held an elaborate "Un-birthday Party" to celebrate every one's surviving another year.
Yuki always told himself that this was more for the younger children. He tried to pretend that he wasn't excited every year when Alison came home with that cake and the party hats. But there was something satisfying about it; even if it wasn't actually his birthday. It was a day that honored and acknowledged his existence; something which didn't happen often for the orphans.
He had been content with the Un-birthday Party; content not knowing when he was born and content not really knowing how old he was. Akagawa had told him he was five when he found him and that was the age he had always based his current age around. Going by this, he was born in 1990, meaning he would be sixteen sometime in the coming year.
And he was content with that.
Or so he thought, that is, until the October of his first year with Kryptonbrand.
Michel was spoiled; there was no doubt about that in Yuki's mind. He had thought that ever since he met the little blond, since that first day when he had so rudely told the Irish boy to shut up and leave him alone.
Michel didn't know what it was like to have a hard life. He had lost his parents, yeah, but he had been raised by some one rich and had never wanted for a thing. Everything he needed -everything he didn't need- had been handed to him on a silver platter.
This was only reinforced on his birthday.
When the twenty-forth of October rolled around, Yuki was amazed by the sheer number of people who knew it was Michel's birthday. Teachers and students at school, strangers on the underground, customers who came in the shop; all of them somehow knew it was his special day. He accepted all of the well-wishes with his usual politeness and a brilliant smile, every one who told him "happy birthday!" throughout day received a cheerful thank you and, more often than not, a hug.
It made Yuki sick. There was no way Michel could possibly be that polite and kind; no way his sugary smiles weren't fake. There was no way he could possibly care so much about the card written in tiny spidery cursive and presented to him by a decrepit old women with a dusty, paper-thin voice. Or the half-dead daisy, probably picked from its giver's mother's flowerpot, which none of them could get to perk up from its wilted posture. He was manipulative; hiding in the guise of a blond angel; why couldn't any one else see it?
Or maybe it was just that Yuki was jealous.
Ken made Michel a cake. It was a vanilla layer cake with strawberry goo in the middle, frosted with the butter-cream icing that Michel liked so much. Ken had been practicing and perfected the art of making tiny flower buds with the pastry bag; his frosting creations actually resembled the flowers he identified them as. "Happy Fifteenth Birthday" was spelled out in pale green frosting; the cake looked more like it belonged on display somewhere than it looked like it should be eaten.
Every one bought him presents. As Yuki had yet to attend a Christmas gathering at the castle at the time of Michel's birthday, he had never in his life seen so many presents for one person. And was he ever slow opening them! It was all Yuki could do to keep himself from pacing the room as Michel carefully unwrapped and folded the paper from each gift, took the time to thank the party responsible for the gift, set it aside and repeated the process again.
Yuki couldn't help feeling bad. He was jealous; he knew he was jealous. No matter how much he pretended he wanted to blend into the woodwork, he wanted to have a day that was all for him; a day where he was the center of attention. And he would never get that day, since no one knew when his birthday was.
Sixteen was supposed to be one of the important birthdays too.
He tried not to sulk, for Michel's sake. It wasn't really his fault; it wasn't any of their faults that he was an orphan. He couldn't blame Akagawa either; Akagawa had always said that Yuki himself had said he was five when Akagawa had questioned him about his family and his name. He just wished he knew for sure.
He made his escape from the party as soon as possible, claiming a long, complicated math assignment. In truth, he did have math homework, but it wasn't anything too difficult. Not for him, at least.
Long after the homework was completed, he found himself lying on his bed, staring up at the ceiling. The melancholic strains of Pink Floyd's "A New Machine" filtered from his computer speakers, filling the room and adding to its gloomy atmosphere. He was so busy wallowing in self-pity, he nearly missed the soft knock on his door.
The birthday boy himself peeked into the room, green eyes dark with concern. "Yuki?" Instead of bursting into the room like he normally would have, he hesitated on the threshold, a soft frown on his face as he waited to be invited in.
"What is it?" Yuki murmured, blue gaze still fixed on the ceiling.
"I thought you might like a piece of the cake Ken made…" The little blond trailed off and Yuki finally looked up, noticing the plate in Michel's hand.
"I'm not hungry." He rolled over on his side as the CD switched tracks.
Michel set the plate on his dresser and padded into the room, sitting himself on the edge of the bed. He was in his pajamas, the cuffs of the flannel bottoms hanging over his feet, the sleeves pushed up so the same wouldn't occur with his hands. He appeared to be, Yuki noticed, worried.
"Are you all right?" He asked softly, one sleeve sliding back down. Instead of pushing it back up, he toyed nervously with it, twisting it between his fingers.
"I'm fine." Yuki replied slowly, "Birthdays just depress me a little."
"Because you don't know when yours is?" Michel lowered his gaze, one finger tracing invisible patterns on Yuki's comforter.
Yuki shrugged. "Yeah."
"Oh." The blond said helplessly, unsure how to cheer his friend up.
A silence slipped into the room when the CD ended; a silence which was neither comfortable nor uncomfortable. A silence which just was.
"Well then," Michel finally said decisively, a hint of cheer creeping back into his voice, "We'll just have to celebrate your being here every day. Then every day will be special and we won't accidentally miss it."
Yuki looked up at him, slightly incredulous. Michel serenely smiled back, the emotion going all the way to his eyes. "Maybe I will have that cake now." The dark-haired boy sat up, a smile twitching at his lips.
As he munched on the cake, he pondered over the day. He had been wrong about birthdays; he knew that now. They weren't just for the person born that day; they were every one who cared about that person as well. You didn't have to have a birthday to make a day special.
And he had been wrong about Michel, too.
All those little nice things he did for people really were sincere.