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At 6 A.M sharp, Raven’s alarm sounds. At 6:01 A.M, Ciel complains about said alarm and demands Raven stay in bed with him. Raven insists he must get up, he has much to do and is loyal to routine, and Ciel insists otherwise. They bicker, in all fun, about it.
At 6:30 A.M, Raven is still firmly wrapped in the covers and his husband’s arms. As indeed loyal to routine he is, this is routine. Wake up at 6, spend ten minutes listening to Ciel whine about him waking up, stay in bed holding (a then sleeping) Ciel for another forty, then slowly weaseling his way out of bed at five-till, taking every second to ensure he doesn’t wake him. He showers and dresses and shaves in the spare bathroom and then heads to the kitchen to make a pot of coffee. After it’s been put on, he opens the curtains around the house, smiling at early morning’s gentle light upon the spring-young flowers.
Lu, who as usual hasn’t even been to bed yet, chastises him for making the whole kitchen smell like coffee and letting Ciel “slack off” and hurting her eyes with all the sudden brightness. He laughs and sits at the table, sipping his drink and reading the novel he began yesterday.
When Ciel finally decides to face his day, Raven already has his coffee prepared for him (one sugar cube, three tablespoons of milk, just how he likes it). Gratefully he receives it along with Raven’s affectionate greeting, thanking him with a kiss. They stand comfortably, Raven with arm around Ciel’s waist, Ciel leaning into his hold. He quickly drains his cup, then starts on breakfast for the three of them. While he does, Raven straightens up the kitchen and living room. Ciel sings as he cooks; Raven hums along. Lu sits at the table, and Ciel serves them before seating himself. They eat in comfortable silence (for the most part. But Lu is always lively and talkative, so she speaks often and brings energy into the still air). When the food is finished, Raven washes the dishes.
This is his life, and he wouldn’t trade it for the world. This is his life, and he almost can’t believe there was a time he would have given it up; once, he had wanted to just… stop living.
But he hadn’t, so now he was here living in this cozy Lanox house with the love of his life and everyone he cared about located just a few cities away, and all was right in his world.
As awful as everything he’d experienced before had been, he was making peace with it. Those events led him here. The worst gave way to the best.
“Darling?” Ciel’s voice startles him out of his reverie. He shakes his head and sets the final plate down.
“Yes, honey?”
“We’re running low on-- well, everything. Would you come down to the orchard with me?”
“Hm? Oh, of course,” he says. “Is Lu asleep?”
Ciel peers over the counter at her. She’s curled up silently on the sofa. “I think so,” he responds. He shuts the cabinet he’d had open and walks over to pick her up in the same manner one would a small child; despite himself, Raven chuckles. After relocating her to her room, Ciel reemerges from the hall and grabs Raven’s hand. “Shall we go?”
“Yes, we shall,” responds Raven, punctuating with a peck on the cheek. They collect some baskets on their way out the door and walk, still hand-in-hand, the ways to the orchard. It’s a rather arduous travel, but they enjoy it and each other’s company all the while. They spend the morning plucking fruit from trees, staying close to each other. At noon they head back home, talking and laughing, baskets full of fruit, hearts full of happiness.
When they return, Ciel immediately pulls bowls and pans of all sorts from the cupboards and starts washing the fruit. Raven offers his assistance. Soon, the kitchen smells like a patisserie and Ciel’s hands and Raven’s face are sticky with spots of batter. They laugh. Ciel kisses away the stains on Raven’s cheeks.
Ciel loves Raven’s dimples, almost as much as he loves when he smiles. He loves the way his voice becomes just a bit higher and adopts a lilt, inherently, whenever he says something sweet and he adores the scars that line his body (even if Raven thinks they’re unsightly-- they’re a part of him, and Ciel loves him, all of him, with everything he’s got), he loves his laugh, soft and breathy, he loves that he’s just ever so slightly shorter than him. Ciel swears up and down he’s never heard anyone sing so much like an angel as Raven, and he’s so immeasurably grateful to him for his patience and kindness toward him and Lu, too. “I love you,” he says, and he swears to himself that he’ll mean those three words for the rest of his life.
“I love you too, honey.” Raven is in love with the faint dusting of freckles spanning the bridge of Ciel’s nose and the calluses on his hands and his lips, always a bit chapped no matter how he tries. The way he snorts a bit when he laughs and how he’s loud without realizing it are the most endearing things; everything he does brings him butterflies still after all this time. He’s comfortable with Ciel, though, more so than anyone else, and he feels safe. He feels completed. (Of course, he appreciates Lu, too. She’s like family to him, and she’s just as much a part of his home as Ciel.)
This, all that he now has, this is what he wanted from life. Raven honestly never expected this for himself, not after he turned 19 and things crashed down around him, but here it was. A decade later, a decade after he’d forfeited his hope, he was happily married to the man of his dreams and surrounded by people he loved, people he could protect and help and support.
And the world was okay. He truly can’t ask for anything more.
Ciel, too, is rather surprised at the state of his life. Taking to the streets, blood-hungry and alone, before he was hardly old enough to even know what murder was-- who could have guessed it would lead him here? To a domestic life like this one, with a husband and a girl he almost felt like a father to… it’s amazing, he thinks.
Both Ciel and Raven have experienced more than their fair share of loss.
But they found one another. And they fill those gaps in each other, those little spaces where grief clambered in with greedy fingers and lay claim to the emptiness where those they’d lost had once been. Of course, the wounds don’t just vanish, they never would, but at least they healed. They’re just scars; they don’t hurt. They stick around forever and serve as reminders, but they don’t hurt, not on their own. That’s what they did for each other, and continue to.
They get the tarts into the oven and slow-dance around the kitchen while they wait for them to bake. Ciel twirls. When he’s facing him again, Raven kisses him.
Lu reappears and joins them just before dinner, which Ciel also cooks. Afterward, they each enjoy a treat (Lu enjoys four), and they put on a movie. Ciel and Raven lay on the couch, legs piled and moved aside so Lu has a spot on the arm.
Once the movie ends, Ciel lets go of Raven and tries to get up-- except he can’t, because Raven is asleep and very much barricading him into the cushions. He watches him for a few tranquil moments, matches his own breathing to Raven’s rhythmic, and falls a little more in love (if it were even possible at that point). He tucks his hair behind his ear, letting his fingertips linger in his red streak. He loves when his hair is completely down because he can play with it like this. Gently he nudges him, “Hey, sweetheart, wake up.”
His eyes flutter open. He gazes at him with warm brown eyes, soft and sleepy, and a drowsy smile tugs at the corners of his lips. “Mm… I don’t want to get up,” he says, hardly audible. He shuts his eyes again, smiling more. “I like being riiight here.” He shifts closer to Ciel.
Affection floods Ciel’s veins. “Well, sweetheart, I like you being there too, but we’re out on the couch and Lu wants to use it to marathon a series.”
“Yeah! Move it, sleepyhead!” she chimes in, playful, and Raven laughs.
“I’m comfortable!” he declares, “I can’t just move.”
Ciel rolls his eyes and sighs, laughs, then brushes Raven’s hair over his shoulder. Immediately he lowers his lips to Raven’s neck. As intended, Raven shoots up with a yelp, face tinged pink. Lu and Ciel laugh, and Raven splutters a comment about how unfair of him that had been.
“All’s fair in love and war!” he protests, then stands. He offers Raven his hand and Raven takes it, rising as well. Lu sprawls herself over the couch with a jump as soon as they’ve cleared it.
“Goodnight, Lu,” Raven says, still holding Ciel’s hand. Ciel repeats him, appending a “don’t stay up too late, there’s more tarts in the fridge,” to it. They head back to their bedroom and carry out their nightly routine. Raven shuts off the light on his way to the bed and slips under the covers. Ciel’s arms circle his waist and his lips brush his cheek.
“I love you,” Ciel says.
“I love you too.” He laces his fingers through Ciel’s, rubs circles on his skin with his thumb. “I love you.” He thinks to say more, he’s sleepy and so, so enamoured; he wants to tell him over and over how he loves him. “Thank you for being a part of my life,” he says. “I love you. I… yeah. I love you.”
His voice falters, but Ciel hears his sentiment loud and clear. He squeezes his hand. “Always,” he says. “Always. I love you.”
“I love you too,” Raven responds. He closes his eyes, pulls Ciel as close as he can. “Goodnight, honey.”
Ciel smiles into the small of his back. “Goodnight, darling.”
This is their love, their life, their home, and they built it all themselves.
This is the rest of their lives.