Ask
Title: Ask Fandom: Kuroshitsuji/Assassin's Creed.
Author: write_rewrite
Rating: G.
Pairings: None.
Warnings: None.
Notes: For hanakotoba_fic, just because. I have entirely too many ideas reeling around the Reapers right now. There's one of William singing 'The Parting Glass', which is a fab Irish song, and another couple of cross over shots and just... chaaaos. And some normal verse. I'll get to it all eventually. Soon. Yeah.
Summary: Alan doesn't know what he's doing.
Alan's first impression of the chamberlain was 'angel'.
He looked precisely like an angel, one in stained glass and concrete, with a strange, blocky rightness to him. His hair was shoulder-length, and the goatee was trimmed down to stubble -- there were nicks on his jaw where the razor had slipped -- and he moved with the effortless bravery of angels, who move as they do because they know they are on the side of God. Those blue, blue eyes saw everything, and they saw him, perched in the tree like a pigeon, and lingered, and then fell away.
For a week, he abandoned the angel chamberlain and his startlingly blue eyes, and tried to focus on what Grell asked him to do instead: small assassination contracts, sending him here and there on errands (which was not part of his job, but were best to do anyway) and, still, the angel face followed him.
One night, Alan climbed up the wall of the castle and to the only lit window, and let himself into the room.
The chamberlain looked up from the table, and cursed, definitely not like an angel, then kicked out a chair.
Alan couldn't help but notice that his hand dropped to his side, where the knife was, and he sighed a little, and shook his head in warning. "I wouldn't do that, if I were you."
"So there was a ghost after all. That silly boy was right." The chamberlain rolled his eyes, and turned back to the papers on the table. Silhouetted against the fire, he seemed less like an angel and more like a fallen angel, and the shadows curved a wicked line beneath his grin, and turned his tawny hair tarnished, and Alan couldn't stop looking at him, for some conceivable reason.
It had to be tonight. Tonight would be the night that the man would die.
Tonight would be the night. His blades were ready, and his will was strong, his training was impeccable. Tonight.
"If yer gonna stand there an' look daft, shut the window," the chamberlain said, like it was perfectly normal for men to climb in through the window. Maybe it was, here. It was back at the schoo, why not here?
Alan pulled the window shut softly, and the moon ducked behind clouds to hide, like it knew what was coming.
"What'll ya be wantin', ghost?" The chamberlain asked, with his hand on his knife.
"Should you hold a knife to defend yourself against a ghost?" Alan was honestly curious on this fact, as he had seen Grell put a saucer of milk on the windowsill to keep away some demented faeries, and he had seen builders wall a black cat into a house for luck, but holding a knife out to a ghost seemed a bit extreme. "Wouldn't that just make it angry?"
The chamberlain lifted his brows.
Alan waved the question away, and hesitantly took a seat. "... What do you do here?"
"Lookin' fer my job?" For a moment, a dark amusement, like a smile at an execution, flickered over the chamberlain's face. "I tend to the king's wishes. Aren't ya s'posed to be hauntin' some castle or other?"
"I get let out at night for good behaviour," and that was mostly true, so he couldn't really tell why the chamberlain laughed, or why he had such a weird, rusty laugh, or why it seemed marginally pleasant. "So you're not involved in politics?"
"Of the kitchen, maybe, with that bastard." The chamberlain shrugged his shoulders casually, "I'm just a servant."
Strange.
The Assassins did not attack mere servants. Had Grell and William made a mistake?
Alan lowered himself down at the edge of the chamberlain's bed, and tried again. "Is your name Eric?"
"Aye."
"Slingby?"
The chamberlain had an uncanny way of lifting his brows that made Alan feel like an utter pillock. "Aye," he said, less surely and more suspiciously. "I'm him. What is it?"
"Nothing." Alan dropped his gaze, certain that his face was red and flushed from this waste of a conversation, and took a step back to the window.
The chamberlain shook his head, and muttered something about dreams, pushing his hair out of his face. "Suit yerself. Try not to scare that blasted boy again. He doesn't need a reason not to do work."
Alan caught the 'yes, master' just before it left his tongue, and snuck back out through the window, and couldn't really explain, not even to himself, why he went back the following night, and the night after that, and the night after that - or why Eric let him in and let him stay.