Falling down the stairs is no fun...
...in case you were considering the prospect. I definitely wouldn't recommend it. *rolls eyes* But now, what you're actually here for: new fic! :D
Title: Rest for the Weary.
Fandom: Count Cain.
Characters: Cain, Riff, Ally.
Prompt: 040 - Sight.
Word Count: 2,026.
Rating: G (despite minor angst)
Summary: "Why was Riff not where he should have been when Cain wanted him? Didn't he know what Cain would think?"
Author's Notes/Disclaimer: Count Cain and all associated characters, settings, etc., belongs to Yuki Kaori-sensei. The only profit I make from this work of fiction is my own satisfaction and, possibly, the enjoyment of others. Ally, who is apparently one of my favorite one-bit characters, is the maid from Black Sheep, but her back story is created by me. Cain here is pretty young - not yet fourteen - by the way. :)
When Cain woke from half-remembered nightmares of solitude and hopelessness, his first instinct was to leap from his bed and run for the one person who could chase away such fears. But leaving his bed would plunge him into the darkness which had enclosed his dreams, and Cain shrank from that option as others would from a vial of arsenic. Instead, he sat straight up in his bed and groped along the wall above his headrest, fingers skidding along the wall until they reached what he had been seeking. He gave the braided cord two short jerks and released it, leaning his head against the wall and closing his eyes to keep out the darkness and its unknown inhabitants.
The cord ran up to the ceiling of Cain’s bedroom, where it passed through a small opening in the wall; it then ran along the top of the wall of Cain’s sitting room and the hallway before entering Riff’s room through a similar hole. The cord - and the bell it was attached to in Riff’s room - had been an idea (neither could recall whose) from half a year ago, when Cain had not yet turned thirteen and was still plagued by dreams mixed with horrifying memory. Since it had scandalized the maids and other servants awake and about the house at night to see their master, clad only in a nightshirt, wandering the halls to his valet’s room when he ought to have been asleep, Riff had rigged the cord so he would know when he was needed and could act accordingly (for some reason, the butler wandering the halls was not nearly as alarming as the young earl). The other servants pretended not to notice the cord nor to know of its purpose, and few enough others went so deep into the living quarters of the Earl of Hargreaves, and fewer still saw the cord, placed high along the wall and of nearly the same color. Those who did see it did not know what it was for, but generally chalked it up to yet another of the peculiarities surrounding the young lord.
Cain lifted his head from the cool wall. Riff was not there. Normally he did not take half this long. Squelching fears of isolation born of his dreams, he pushed the covers back and eased down to the floor, stifling a sigh of relief when nothing attacked his bare feet. He shook his head at his own foolishness; he was too old and too knowledgeable to fear the dark. He pushed open the door separating his sleeping chamber from his private sitting room and hesitated, turning back to grab his bathrobe so as not to startle the maids per his usual wont. He reflected on lighting a lantern from the banked embers of the fire but decided against it; Riff’s room was not too far from his own. Perhaps the cord had frayed and the bell had never rung…
Cain pulled his robe more snugly against himself as he entered the hallway, but though the lamps were lit no one was there. Relieved, he ghosted along the hallway quickly until he reached the door he sought. He knocked twice in a peremptory manner before opening the door without waiting for a reply. Blinking to adjust his eyes to the dark, he glanced around the room, seeking his absent valet at the desk, on the bed, on the floor.
The room was empty.
Cain’s eyebrows drew down in consternation and then flew up in surprise at a shocked voice from behind him. “Earl Hargreaves!”
He whirled to stare up at the wide eyes of one of the maids. Ally, he remembered, one of those who had been hired after his father’s death and, as such, knew him only as the poor young orphaned earl. He recalled her as being particularly motherly and kind towards him, due to his close proximity in age to her only brother, and he was pleased that it had not been the head housekeeper who had found him, as she would certainly have shown no patience for his nighttime peregrinations.
“Hullo,” he said calmly, as if meeting her so in Riff’s vacant room were routine, “Where’s Riff?”
Ally lowered her hand from her mouth and peeked behind him. “Mister Raffit is not in his room?” she questioned deferentially, and Cain felt a sudden surge of appreciation. She was not going to ask what he had been doing. He shook his head. “Oh. Then he must be in his accounting room.”
“His accounting room?” Cain repeated in bewilderment. He had never heard of such a place.
She bobbed a respectful curtsy to him. “Beggin’ your pardon, sir. That’s just what the staff calls it. It’s really your room, sir, that Mister Raffit uses when he’s tallying up the books for the records and whatnot - the staff’s pay and such.”
Cain blinked. That Riff would have such a chamber made sense, of course - he had merely never considered the fact that, in addition to his duties as Cain’s personal servant, Riff also had duties to the household staff. At least Cain knew that Riff was still in the house, that he was not gone, that Cain was not alone as the dreams had tried to tell him-
He shook his head, not caring what Ally made of the gesture. “Where-” he cleared his throat. “Where is this room? Can you take me?” he added as an afterthought, since she had a lantern and he had none.
“Oh,” Ally hesitated and glanced down the hallway. Curious, Cain peered out of the door as well, but it was as empty as before. He looked at her inquisitively. “I’m really not allowed to go outside the area I’m to clean, my lord,” she murmured as if embarrassed. Cain gave her his most aristocratic look and she glanced at the floor, abashed. “But I suppose it would be all right, seeing as it’s for you, sir.”
Cain nodded slowly and resolutely. “It is,” he agreed, “and if the housekeeper comes along-” she looked back up, obviously surprised he had known what she feared “-I shall let her know you have my express permission to be leaving your area.” He stuck out his elbow haughtily and she stared at him, uncomprehending. He sighed, seized her arm, wrapped it about his own, and swept as regally down the hall as he could, considering that he was in a robe, not a suit, and there was a confused maid holding a lantern clinging to his arm, not a well-dressed young noblewoman. But the look Ally gave him out of the corner of her eyes, both admiring and questioning, made him feel older and infinitely more mature. Inwardly, he grinned with pleasure; one could get used to this feeling.
He felt smug even when Ally had to tug at his arm to lead him into the servants’ stairwell. “Beggin’ your pardon, sir,” she said again as she took him down two flights of stairs (they had had to drop arms for this part), “but this is the only way I know to Mister Raffit’s room.”
When they reached the correct floor, Cain seized her arm again and continued his stately stride until he could see an open door with light spilling out of it. They stopped. “There’s his room, sir,” said Ally, nodding towards it.
Cain patted her arm as he released it. “Thank you, Ally,” he said gravely, and she blushed and ducked her head. “Remember - if you see the housekeeper, tell her you’re on my orders. Good night.” He nodded at her and strolled smoothly toward Riff’s room. Oh yes, he thought to himself with a small smirk, women staring and blushing. One certainly could become accustomed to this.
He cleared his thoughts of women and let his features settle into a frown as he neared the door. Meeting Ally so unexpectedly had allowed him to ignore the fears that had flooded him when he saw Riff’s empty room, and his fear had stagnated somewhat into anger. Why was Riff not where he should have been when Cain wanted him? Didn’t he know what Cain would think when he found his room empty? Why was he-
Then Cain crossed into the rectangle of light flowing from the door to Riff’s ‘accounting room’ and froze.
The room was as he would likely have imagined it: bookcases stacked with notebooks, labeled in Riff’s deliberate hand (“September through November Finances” proclaimed one); a fire in the hearth slowly dying to embers; and, within easy reach of the shelved notebooks, a desk piled with papers and books. And on that desk, head pillowed on a sheath of papers, hand still loosely holding a pen, quite deeply asleep, was Riff.
Cain let out a breath and leaned against the doorframe, lips curving into a very slight smile. He had never seen his butler look so… casual. He had seen Riff sleeping before, but only in short catnaps or in Riff’s own bed. Now, with his jacket folded neatly over the back of the chair he slumped in and his tie carelessly coiled on an open ledger, Cain could believe that there really had once been a time when Riff had not been his stoic valet. He allowed himself a moment to smile fondly and indulgently at the older man before striding over to the chair to shake him awake. Riff would sleep much better in his own room, and not strain his back and neck besides.
“Riff,” he said firmly. “Riff, wake up.”
Riff jerked slightly before his eyes slowly blinked open. He stared at Cain without comprehension, eyes still clouded with sleep. Cain could tell the moment he woke up, because the blue eyes suddenly sharpened, then widened in horror. “Master-oof,” he grunted as he tried to leap from the chair without pushing it away from the desk. Cain winced in sympathy and bit the inside of his cheek to stave off inappropriate laughter. “Master Cain,” Riff finally managed to gasp, trying to surreptitiously straighten his shirt and massage his knees at the same time. He glanced ruefully at the tie on his desk before evidently giving up his appearance as a lost cause. “Sir, what are you doing here? You ought to be in bed…”
“Looking for you, of course,” Cain replied smartly. “I must say, I’m surprised you managed to keep this place a secret from me for so long. I never would have found you without Ally’s help.” Riff appeared tired, bewildered, and greatly at a loss for words, much to Cain’s amusement. He tugged at Riff’s shirtsleeve, knowing how that annoyed him, and said cheerfully, “Come now, Riff, time for all good butlers to be asleep - comfortably in their own beds, if you please.”
“Ah - but sir-” Riff attempted before Cain cut him off.
“No, no, you’re not going back to your dratted papers. They’ve taken up quite enough of your time tonight as it is. You are to bed, and then I am, as well.”
Riff finally allowed his master to tug him over to the fireplace to bank the coals and then out of the room altogether, making their way back up the servants’ stairs in a rather odd procession that no one was around to appreciate. But the butler put his foot down when they reached Cain’s room, dead-set against going to bed before his master was tucked into his own. Cain eyed him suspiciously until Riff, with an almost palpable sense of propriety, promised that he would go immediately to his own rest once he saw his master settled. Then Cain happily permitted himself to be nestled contentedly into the previously abandoned covers of his four-poster. With heavy eyes, he watched Riff stoke the fireplace to a more warming temperature but fell asleep before his valet could leave.
Riff paused at the door to his master’s room, his own eyes weary but affectionate. “Good night, sir,” he whispered to the still air as he shut the door behind him.
Cain had no more nightmares that night.
END
My Little Damn Table.
Title: Rest for the Weary.
Fandom: Count Cain.
Characters: Cain, Riff, Ally.
Prompt: 040 - Sight.
Word Count: 2,026.
Rating: G (despite minor angst)
Summary: "Why was Riff not where he should have been when Cain wanted him? Didn't he know what Cain would think?"
Author's Notes/Disclaimer: Count Cain and all associated characters, settings, etc., belongs to Yuki Kaori-sensei. The only profit I make from this work of fiction is my own satisfaction and, possibly, the enjoyment of others. Ally, who is apparently one of my favorite one-bit characters, is the maid from Black Sheep, but her back story is created by me. Cain here is pretty young - not yet fourteen - by the way. :)
When Cain woke from half-remembered nightmares of solitude and hopelessness, his first instinct was to leap from his bed and run for the one person who could chase away such fears. But leaving his bed would plunge him into the darkness which had enclosed his dreams, and Cain shrank from that option as others would from a vial of arsenic. Instead, he sat straight up in his bed and groped along the wall above his headrest, fingers skidding along the wall until they reached what he had been seeking. He gave the braided cord two short jerks and released it, leaning his head against the wall and closing his eyes to keep out the darkness and its unknown inhabitants.
The cord ran up to the ceiling of Cain’s bedroom, where it passed through a small opening in the wall; it then ran along the top of the wall of Cain’s sitting room and the hallway before entering Riff’s room through a similar hole. The cord - and the bell it was attached to in Riff’s room - had been an idea (neither could recall whose) from half a year ago, when Cain had not yet turned thirteen and was still plagued by dreams mixed with horrifying memory. Since it had scandalized the maids and other servants awake and about the house at night to see their master, clad only in a nightshirt, wandering the halls to his valet’s room when he ought to have been asleep, Riff had rigged the cord so he would know when he was needed and could act accordingly (for some reason, the butler wandering the halls was not nearly as alarming as the young earl). The other servants pretended not to notice the cord nor to know of its purpose, and few enough others went so deep into the living quarters of the Earl of Hargreaves, and fewer still saw the cord, placed high along the wall and of nearly the same color. Those who did see it did not know what it was for, but generally chalked it up to yet another of the peculiarities surrounding the young lord.
Cain lifted his head from the cool wall. Riff was not there. Normally he did not take half this long. Squelching fears of isolation born of his dreams, he pushed the covers back and eased down to the floor, stifling a sigh of relief when nothing attacked his bare feet. He shook his head at his own foolishness; he was too old and too knowledgeable to fear the dark. He pushed open the door separating his sleeping chamber from his private sitting room and hesitated, turning back to grab his bathrobe so as not to startle the maids per his usual wont. He reflected on lighting a lantern from the banked embers of the fire but decided against it; Riff’s room was not too far from his own. Perhaps the cord had frayed and the bell had never rung…
Cain pulled his robe more snugly against himself as he entered the hallway, but though the lamps were lit no one was there. Relieved, he ghosted along the hallway quickly until he reached the door he sought. He knocked twice in a peremptory manner before opening the door without waiting for a reply. Blinking to adjust his eyes to the dark, he glanced around the room, seeking his absent valet at the desk, on the bed, on the floor.
The room was empty.
Cain’s eyebrows drew down in consternation and then flew up in surprise at a shocked voice from behind him. “Earl Hargreaves!”
He whirled to stare up at the wide eyes of one of the maids. Ally, he remembered, one of those who had been hired after his father’s death and, as such, knew him only as the poor young orphaned earl. He recalled her as being particularly motherly and kind towards him, due to his close proximity in age to her only brother, and he was pleased that it had not been the head housekeeper who had found him, as she would certainly have shown no patience for his nighttime peregrinations.
“Hullo,” he said calmly, as if meeting her so in Riff’s vacant room were routine, “Where’s Riff?”
Ally lowered her hand from her mouth and peeked behind him. “Mister Raffit is not in his room?” she questioned deferentially, and Cain felt a sudden surge of appreciation. She was not going to ask what he had been doing. He shook his head. “Oh. Then he must be in his accounting room.”
“His accounting room?” Cain repeated in bewilderment. He had never heard of such a place.
She bobbed a respectful curtsy to him. “Beggin’ your pardon, sir. That’s just what the staff calls it. It’s really your room, sir, that Mister Raffit uses when he’s tallying up the books for the records and whatnot - the staff’s pay and such.”
Cain blinked. That Riff would have such a chamber made sense, of course - he had merely never considered the fact that, in addition to his duties as Cain’s personal servant, Riff also had duties to the household staff. At least Cain knew that Riff was still in the house, that he was not gone, that Cain was not alone as the dreams had tried to tell him-
He shook his head, not caring what Ally made of the gesture. “Where-” he cleared his throat. “Where is this room? Can you take me?” he added as an afterthought, since she had a lantern and he had none.
“Oh,” Ally hesitated and glanced down the hallway. Curious, Cain peered out of the door as well, but it was as empty as before. He looked at her inquisitively. “I’m really not allowed to go outside the area I’m to clean, my lord,” she murmured as if embarrassed. Cain gave her his most aristocratic look and she glanced at the floor, abashed. “But I suppose it would be all right, seeing as it’s for you, sir.”
Cain nodded slowly and resolutely. “It is,” he agreed, “and if the housekeeper comes along-” she looked back up, obviously surprised he had known what she feared “-I shall let her know you have my express permission to be leaving your area.” He stuck out his elbow haughtily and she stared at him, uncomprehending. He sighed, seized her arm, wrapped it about his own, and swept as regally down the hall as he could, considering that he was in a robe, not a suit, and there was a confused maid holding a lantern clinging to his arm, not a well-dressed young noblewoman. But the look Ally gave him out of the corner of her eyes, both admiring and questioning, made him feel older and infinitely more mature. Inwardly, he grinned with pleasure; one could get used to this feeling.
He felt smug even when Ally had to tug at his arm to lead him into the servants’ stairwell. “Beggin’ your pardon, sir,” she said again as she took him down two flights of stairs (they had had to drop arms for this part), “but this is the only way I know to Mister Raffit’s room.”
When they reached the correct floor, Cain seized her arm again and continued his stately stride until he could see an open door with light spilling out of it. They stopped. “There’s his room, sir,” said Ally, nodding towards it.
Cain patted her arm as he released it. “Thank you, Ally,” he said gravely, and she blushed and ducked her head. “Remember - if you see the housekeeper, tell her you’re on my orders. Good night.” He nodded at her and strolled smoothly toward Riff’s room. Oh yes, he thought to himself with a small smirk, women staring and blushing. One certainly could become accustomed to this.
He cleared his thoughts of women and let his features settle into a frown as he neared the door. Meeting Ally so unexpectedly had allowed him to ignore the fears that had flooded him when he saw Riff’s empty room, and his fear had stagnated somewhat into anger. Why was Riff not where he should have been when Cain wanted him? Didn’t he know what Cain would think when he found his room empty? Why was he-
Then Cain crossed into the rectangle of light flowing from the door to Riff’s ‘accounting room’ and froze.
The room was as he would likely have imagined it: bookcases stacked with notebooks, labeled in Riff’s deliberate hand (“September through November Finances” proclaimed one); a fire in the hearth slowly dying to embers; and, within easy reach of the shelved notebooks, a desk piled with papers and books. And on that desk, head pillowed on a sheath of papers, hand still loosely holding a pen, quite deeply asleep, was Riff.
Cain let out a breath and leaned against the doorframe, lips curving into a very slight smile. He had never seen his butler look so… casual. He had seen Riff sleeping before, but only in short catnaps or in Riff’s own bed. Now, with his jacket folded neatly over the back of the chair he slumped in and his tie carelessly coiled on an open ledger, Cain could believe that there really had once been a time when Riff had not been his stoic valet. He allowed himself a moment to smile fondly and indulgently at the older man before striding over to the chair to shake him awake. Riff would sleep much better in his own room, and not strain his back and neck besides.
“Riff,” he said firmly. “Riff, wake up.”
Riff jerked slightly before his eyes slowly blinked open. He stared at Cain without comprehension, eyes still clouded with sleep. Cain could tell the moment he woke up, because the blue eyes suddenly sharpened, then widened in horror. “Master-oof,” he grunted as he tried to leap from the chair without pushing it away from the desk. Cain winced in sympathy and bit the inside of his cheek to stave off inappropriate laughter. “Master Cain,” Riff finally managed to gasp, trying to surreptitiously straighten his shirt and massage his knees at the same time. He glanced ruefully at the tie on his desk before evidently giving up his appearance as a lost cause. “Sir, what are you doing here? You ought to be in bed…”
“Looking for you, of course,” Cain replied smartly. “I must say, I’m surprised you managed to keep this place a secret from me for so long. I never would have found you without Ally’s help.” Riff appeared tired, bewildered, and greatly at a loss for words, much to Cain’s amusement. He tugged at Riff’s shirtsleeve, knowing how that annoyed him, and said cheerfully, “Come now, Riff, time for all good butlers to be asleep - comfortably in their own beds, if you please.”
“Ah - but sir-” Riff attempted before Cain cut him off.
“No, no, you’re not going back to your dratted papers. They’ve taken up quite enough of your time tonight as it is. You are to bed, and then I am, as well.”
Riff finally allowed his master to tug him over to the fireplace to bank the coals and then out of the room altogether, making their way back up the servants’ stairs in a rather odd procession that no one was around to appreciate. But the butler put his foot down when they reached Cain’s room, dead-set against going to bed before his master was tucked into his own. Cain eyed him suspiciously until Riff, with an almost palpable sense of propriety, promised that he would go immediately to his own rest once he saw his master settled. Then Cain happily permitted himself to be nestled contentedly into the previously abandoned covers of his four-poster. With heavy eyes, he watched Riff stoke the fireplace to a more warming temperature but fell asleep before his valet could leave.
Riff paused at the door to his master’s room, his own eyes weary but affectionate. “Good night, sir,” he whispered to the still air as he shut the door behind him.
Cain had no more nightmares that night.
END
My Little Damn Table.