For the seventh time today, Ciel glances up at his heavy rosewood doors and, seeing them still and silent as before, returns to his work—but not without a sliver of growing frustration. He had been agitated since three this morning, waking at an obscenely early hour and finding that he simply could not fall back asleep again. For a moment he had blamed it on the nightmares and retrieved several folders and files from his nightstand. The queen's work always put his mind at ease, reviewing the names of criminals and cardinals whose heads would soon be impaled on pikes if he ordered Sebastian to do so.

But after forty minutes of listless reading and re-reading, Ciel closed the files with mild perturbation and returned to his bed in a vain attempt to fall back to sleep. It was five o'clock in the morning and Sebastian would not wake him for another four hours. He looked over the monthly operating reports from Funtom, meticulously surveyed his various partnerships and found that the details—the precise details he could always recall with such clarity—were blurred, almost muddled, and hardly interesting at all.

He could not focus—could not think—and once he came to terms with this notion, Ciel glared viciously at the papers and signatures scattered around him before shoving it all back into his dresser. He paced his room twice before sitting back down, a bruised violet on a bed of cool sapphire silk. He sat there, beneath canopy of midnight blue satin and began to long for the sun.

He lit the candle on his nightstand and, once illuminated in the darkness, Ciel felt a bizarre urge—one he could not quite explain—to reach into his top drawer and retrieve a book of poetry he rarely read.

Why he kept it there, so close to his sleeping form, he could not say.

It was a collection of poems by Gerard de Nerval—a masterpiece of fleur-de-lis prose, weighty and succinct and so painfully beautiful. It had been a gift, Ciel remembers now. One he simply couldn't bear to discard.

A gift.

Ciel glances up, eyes glaring at the rosewood doors for the eighth time that afternoon, and, finding them still closed, scowls with bitter disappointment.

A gift.

From Elizabeth.

Sebastian wheels in the afternoon tea and cakes with an assured flourish of sanguine evocation, one he manages to evoke in every act performed, whether subservient or homicidal. Ciel decides he will hate Keemun tea today and the accompanying flødebolle and the moment he resolves to do so, the butler glances up at him with a knowing smile of quiet, contemplative mischief.

"My lord." He defers and Ciel wants to slap him—not a foreign impulse but certainly a hateful one that isn't usually summoned without good reason.

Then again, Ciel has never experienced this sort of quiet, strange anxiety and he doesn't quite know what to feel until his eyes lower and he realizes what it is he's written down.

La fleur qui plaisait tant à mon coeur désolé,/ Et la treille où le Pampre à la Rose s'allie.

His master is clever.

Clever, shrewd, formidable, sly—a whole list of persuasive adjectives that could be used to describe king, prince, or knight. Yet his master is not half so noble.

But, Sebastian concedes, he is fully cognizant of the world around him, aware of everything save one little detail that has now been entombed in the depths of his heart since his childhood days.

Since beginning his service as the Phantomhive butler, Sebastian has become aware of three very important things about his young master's character: he is iron-willed, he is cruel, and he is utterly and completely blind to the longings of his own heart. For the past two weeks, his Lady Elizabeth has been absent from the estate and while the young lord feigns ignorance, Sebastian knows it is the root cause of his callous anger and bitter disappointment.

Tantrums were now on the horizon as the blue haired earl viciously stabs at a sheet of quality parchment with a heavy, reckless fountain pen, almost willing the entire document to burst into flames with the intensity of his gaze alone. From the corner of his eye, Sebastian watches as Ciel quickly raises his head and, seeing still closed doors, angrily returns to his foreman's annual report.

"Ink." Ciel all but snarls, signing his name with a flourish that nearly tears the document in two.

"My lord." Sebastian bows and departs, with the stealth of a shadow at dawn, descending down spiraling steps to one of the many storage rooms below the mansion.

He sees Finnian there, carrying a new gardening spade.

"Oh, Sebastian!" The young man beams, eyes wide and cheery but also troubled to a very great degree.

"Finnian."

"Er…can I ask you something? That is, if you don't mind answering?"

The shelves had been built by Sebastian himself and he easily retrieves two ink pots (blue) and a piston converter. "You may." He answers smoothly, purposely indulging his own amusement as his master had not heeded him to hurry.

Finny rubs the back of his neck, clearly embarrassed but the devotion he owes his employer eventually wins out. "I…um…is there something…wrong…with the young master today? Or...just recently?"

"What a thing to wonder." Sebastian evades, adjusting his grip on the two ink pots. "He is in excellent health." Physical health, perhaps—though that also leaves something to be desired.

Finny looks nervous and a thin sheet of perspiration appears on his brow. "But, Sebastian—he's been behaving very…"

"Yes?"

"I, um…"

"Speak up, Finnian. Eloquence and enunciation are two things a Phantomhive servant must always hold in high esteem."

"Yes, sir!" He quickly straightens like a wind-up doll, shoulders thrown back in military fashion. "I was wondering if there is anything we can do for the young master, sir!"

Sebastian hides a smile. "I do believe a bouquet of roses to the Lady Elizabeth would benefit his lordship greatly."

"…Roses?"

"Indeed." He pauses. "On second thought, pink carnations. With baby's breath woven in."

Finny's eyes widen owlishly. "Is a card necessary?"

"Yes—but the young master has already written it himself."

"Has he? What does it say?" He asks before he can stop himself.

Sebastian smirks.

"La fleur qui plaisait tant à mon coeur désolé,/ Et la treille où le Pampre à la Rose s'allie." He adjusts the cuff of his immaculate suit jacket. "A very fine declaration, if I do say so myself."

Finny shifts from one foot to the next. "Um. A declaration of…what, exactly?"

With swanlike grace, Sebastian observes his pocket watch and shakes his head. "Another time, young Finnian." He intones, voice rich with hidden amusement. Before the blonde man can utter another word, the butler has already ascended the spiraling staircase and within two seconds, was standing before the heavy rosewood doors guarding his master's study.

Romance. The demon chuckled. What a thing to behold.

- La fleur qui plaisait tant à mon coeur désolé,/ Et la treille où le Pampre à la Rose s'allie. = The flower that my afflicted heart liked so much/ And the trellised vineyard where the grapevine unites with the rose. (El Desdichado by Gerard de Nerval, 1854)

- Pink carnation: in Victorian times, this flower meant I'll never forget you.

- Baby's breath connotes remembrance, or: reconnecting with lost loves.

A/N: My sickeningly sweet k-pop inspired Ciel/Lizzy fic. A spoonful of sugar for the lack of Cielizzy in these recent Kuro chapters. (Warning: may cause toothaches.)