Disclaimer: I own nothing. :D
Author's Note: My contribution to a Ciel Birthday Collaboration Project with the lovely and talented Madeleine-Elizabeth! I thought we were gonna wait until the 14th to post everything, but seeing as Maddie has already published the accompanying picture on DA (which you can see here: http(colon)(slash slash)madeleine-elizabeth(dot)deviantart(dot)com(slash)(hashtag)(slash)d4ijm1i), I figured I'd go ahead and put the fanfic up, myself. :3
Hope you enjoy!
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Candle
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"Happy birthday to you…"
Silken and soft, sonorous and sour. The whispered melody curdles in the corners of the darkened dining room, twisting and twining around the statuesque pair like ribbons on a present. Like spider silk in stale air. Like maggots in corpses and serpents in Eden and formless, faceless shadows whose caresses are far-too-intimate, cleaving greedily to master and servant before swallowing them whole. Gobbled down. Eaten up.
Like cake.
"Happy birthday to you…"
Silvery smoke spirals from a single snowy bougie, placed precisely and precariously betwixt sugar-spun roses and sumptuous slivers of strawberry. Pale and knotted, the commemorative decoration protrudes from the mountainous mud of fudge frosting like a macabre, melting tombstone— a grave reminder that, in truth, this fête is nothing more than a celebration of one's fleeting existence. Of the transience of life and the reality of an encroaching death.
One year further from the start. One year closer to the finish. In the golden gleam of the guttering taper, Ciel is reminded that humankind burns the candle at both ends.
There is nothing to celebrate. Nothing to hope for. Nothing to wish for.
"Happy birthday, young master…"
And so he does not puff the ending breath, however long his butler waits for it. He holds it in—holds everything in—as weary crimson eyes glitter with the same lifeless faucets as faultless rubies set in porcelain. Once, innumerable birthdays ago, the child had tried to put them both out of their misery. Long before the song's finish—sometimes before it even began—his exasperated sigh would extinguish the ruddy radiance of the merry flame. (After all, he was not a being of light. Not any longer. Not anymore.) And as the earl daintily dabbed dollops of Devonshire cream from his fingertips, he would pretend not to notice the way his butler saved the misshapen bougie. How he recycled the same taper, over and over and over again, as if it were some sort of perverse metaphor. Perhaps it was, really, for with each passing year, it mimicked his own mortality: inevitably distorting, warping, and shrinking, no matter how quickly he attempted—demanded— that the candle be snuffed.
It could never be smothered fast enough.
Never fast enough.
"Happy birthday to you."
And so another birthday is their punishment.
Ciel sits, stiff-backed and silent, on the very edge of his mahogany throne. Atop his lap, his hands are folded; beneath his seat, his ankles laced. Despite his age, only the very tips of his straining toes are able to reach the murky marble floor. Only the feathery fringes of his hoary hair can be seen through the gloom. Like a sickle moon, the curve of his bangs shimmers an ethereal shade of mercury as it reflects the winking firefly glow of the tiny torch wedged within the cantarella confection of saccharine rot before him. A sputter, a pop; the undulating wick hisses in feral displeasure—, in writhing, spitting agony—, as it drowns in liquidizing chocolate. The plastic pools of molten wax bleed burgundy as they mix with the eviscerated juices of hemorrhaging fruits.
The pastry is an unpalatable mess. Not that he would have been able to consume it, anyway.
"Make a wish," the devil murmurs, in a voice that cracks with the archaic brittleness of autumn leaves. No longer a vision of vibrancy and color, the demon has lingered long-past his prime; he is little more than a slip of memory bound to a body of ashes and dust.
His smiles are gentle now. Starved of cruelty and hatred after so many, many, many years.
His master frowns. I did, once.
And as the fragile light of life at last extinguishes itself, so too does the final flickering of blue die within the iridescent smolder of scarlet eyes.
XXX