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the ties that bind

Sebastian finds his young master in a bell foundry in Whitechapel, stripped of coat, vest and boots, and tied spread-eagle between a few hooks in the ceiling. It’s very impressive rigging, in all honesty, and Sebastian takes a few moments to appreciate the intricate interlacing of half-hitch, clove hitch and studding sail knots used to string Ciel up like a fish about to be gutted.

“What manner of criminal was it that nabbed you this time, young master?” asks Sebastian absently, still enchanted by the knotwork. “Whoever it was, they are quite gifted with ropes. Have you run afoul of the Royal Navy?”

“Sebastian, don’t be daft,” Ciel snaps, fixing his demon with a scowl. “The Royal Navy doesn’t hang about in Whitechapel.”

“Ah, I would imagine there are quite a few local ladies that would disagree with you.” Sebastian smiles at him, charmed by the way the ropes cut into Ciel’s thin wrists.

Like a fly in a spider’s web, he thinks, and oh, would his young master be furious to be thought of in that manner!

“That’s neither here nor there,” Ciel says, a bit stuffily. “And as to my abductors, I imagine they are of the lowest, basest sort of criminal. They took my shoes, Sebastian.” Ciel raises his chin, voice fairly dripping with aristocratic disdain. “How dreadfully common.”

Sebastian reaches up and runs his fingers over the rough-hewn rope tied around Ciel’s wrists, noticing that it is also looped loosely around his neck. Sebastian’s eyes narrow. How strange, why bother tying a noose if you’re not going to tighten it?

“Do stop gawking, Sebastian, and get me down from here.” Ciel looks down at the floor, nose wrinkling in distaste. “But I am not setting my feet on that floor, I shall have you know. I think there is broken glass of some kind. What are you looking at, demon?” Ciel wriggles a little in the ropes, which is...distracting.

“Shhh,” Sebastian says, placing a finger across Ciel’s mouth. “I’m trying to concentrate.”

Ciel, as expected, bites his finger. Hard. “On what, you depraved fiend? My discomfort?”

Always, but that isn’t what has Sebastian concerned. “The ropes, young master. There appears to be some sort of pattern to the knots. I believe untying them haphazardly may cause you some...intense discomfort.”

“As compared to the intense comfort in which I am currently languishing?” Ciel tries to kick him, spitefully, and manages to tighten the ropes around his wrists as he does so. “How shall it be any worse if you untie me?”

Sebastian reaches up and runs his fingers across the rope around Ciel’s neck. “You shall be hanged by the neck until dead, my lord.” Sebastian’s eyes gleam with momentary hellfire. “Like a traitor strung up on Tower Hill.”

“What?” Ciel rolls his eyes. “Someone went to a great deal of trouble to arrange a diabolical death trap when they could have simply hanged me and been done with it.” He references his demise with the casual disregard of one who knows he was never in any real danger, because he wasn’t. They both know the thing that will kill him is not the ropes shackling his thin frame, but the creature who is plotting how best to release him from them. “This is very complicated. And boring. And it’s cold in here, Sebastian, I thought one needed fire to make bells?”

“I shall have you home and in a warm bath momentarily, young master. It is a very clever diabolical death trap, though, you must admit.” Ciel’s abductor had assumed Ciel’s rescuer would free his young lord’s wrists from the ropes straightaway, as they were chafed and red and already showing signs of rope burn.

That’s why they took the jacket. So that I would see his wrists, and attend immediately to his most obvious discomfort. Sebastian makes a clicking sort of sound and studies Ciel’s feet, wondering if the lack of shoes is some other attempt to direct his efforts, or if that was simply Ciel’s assailant being a bit of a cad.

Obviously, the mastermind behind this little display did not know Sebastian. He might very well leave Ciel’s wrists to the end even if there weren’t a trap to avoid, as he finds the idea of Ciel’s wrists bruised and pained beneath the starched French cuffs of his shirt and the stiff heavy velvet of his overcoat quite stirring. Sebastian will always save his master from death or serious injury, but mild irritants are another matter entirely. A little suffering is good for the soul.

“I must do no such thing,” Ciel snaps, squirming a bit. “And if you’re so enamored of this rigging, Sebastian, do feel free to tie yourself up in it. I, however, have had quite enough of the experience.”

“Of course. One moment.” Sebastian leaps gracefully into the air, flipping so that he hangs upside down, batlike, from the rafters above.

Ciel sighs very loudly. “Bats in the belfry, indeed. You are terribly fond of melodrama, no wonder you appreciate needlessly complicated death traps.”

“Well, I am a demon,” Sebastian points out, humming as he works quickly through the knots with fingers that are no longer quite human. “We appreciate theatrics.”

“Part of your aesthetic again, eh?”

“Quite.” Sebastian deliberately loses the pattern at the end, so that the rope trap releases Ciel everywhere but around the neck -- and waits until the last moment to catch his young master up in his arms, before the noose tightens.

They stare at each other for a moment, demon and prey. Ciel appears highly irritated. “Damn demon,” he mutters, and pulls at the rope around his neck. “It’s itchy.” He throws it off of him and the rope falls to the floor, bereft of the neck it had been designed to break.

“It is raining outside, young master,” Sebastian says, as they make their way to the door. “And in lieu of carrying you through the East End, unshod and bare-headed and lacking a proper coat, I shall use other methods of returning us to the townhouse.”

“Do as you must,” Ciel says, and shifts in Sebastian’s arms. Ciel wraps his own arms around Sebastian’s neck, knowing how to hold fast to his demon when acrobatics are imminent. Ciel’s grasp is just a shade past comfortable, and he tucks his face into the side of Sebastian’s neck. Sebastian can feel him smile against the skin there. “I shall repay the favor and give you the chance to enjoy something irritating around your neck. You’re welcome.”

That surprises a genuine sound of amusement from Sebastian; and as always, when his laughter is unintentional it sounds a bit like the caw of a crow. “Young master is gracious indeed.” He walks towards the door and thinks about the noose around Ciel’s neck, about Ciel’s arms around his own.

Like a collar. Both of them bound to the other, secured with knots that cannot be undone.

Until the end.

The rain whips at them as Sebastian navigates through the rooftops of London back to the townhouse. Against him, Ciel shivers and presses closer, seeking relief from the cold. Sebastian puts one hand on Ciel’s back, feels the knobs of his spine through the sodden material of his shirt.

“Your hand is as cold as the air,” Ciel mutters, contrary and ungrateful, but almost drowsily so, as if he is merely being disagreeable out of habit. “You should have given your master your jacket.”

“My eternal apologies for my oversight, but we are home, young master.” Sebastian alights on the roof of the townhouse.

“Do you mean to go in through the chimney, demon?”

“You were only recently speaking of your desire for a fire, young master,” Sebastian reminds him, with an affected chuckle. It turns quickly into a hiss that is completely unnatural as Ciel bites his neck.

“To be in front of one, not in one,” Ciel says, something in his voice that suggests he wants, and that being strung up like a pig at the butcher’s might have given him ideas of his own. “Given where you call home, I can see how that might confuse you. This is my house, Sebastian. I am going in through the front door like a proper lord, not sneaking in through a window.”

Sebastian does a backflip off the roof, for no reason other than because he can and because Ciel will not expect it; and it earns him a soft catch of breath breathed warm against his skin, and Ciel’s fingers tightening in his hair and pulling sharply, like a reprimand.

* * *
Sebastian carries Ciel into the large bathroom adjoining the master suite, and sets him down on the tile. He kneels in front of him and strips the wet shirt, stockings and trousers from Ciel’s thin, shivering form and wraps the boy immediately in a warm towel. He rubs the towel briskly up and down Ciel’s arms and torso to ease the chill in his skin.

He does the same to Ciel’s hair, which is soaked and dripping in the boy’s face and onto the floor, and earns himself a fierce scowl for his efforts. Sebastian ignores it; were Ciel to suddenly appear too cooperative, Sebastian would be worried the boy was seriously ill.

Sebastian tugs the eyepatch off of Ciel’s head, as it too is wet and shall need to be thoroughly clean and dried. Or perhaps it is time for a new one altogether….

The patch falls to the floor between them, and Ciel blinks a few times as he adjusts to having both of his eyes in use at once. Their eyes meet, and Sebastian finds himself swaying forward a bit on his knees, feels the mark on his hand flare to life as Ciel’s glows softly in the low light of the bathroom.

“My lord?” he asks, for the feeling of an order is there, even if the words are not. He is holding the towel around Ciel’s shoulders, grasping each side to keep it from slipping.

Ciel is watching him, hair pushed back off his forehead and gaze speculative. Sebastian takes a moment to study him, to catalogue the differences in the face regarding him so solemnly from that of the child who summoned him some five years ago. He is not substantially taller than he was when Sebastian first came to him, but his face has the shadows of adulthood now; fine cheekbones that speak to his excellent breeding, an expressive mouth, that aristocratic nose.

Those large, wide eyes of his convey a deceptive youthfulness that Ciel uses ruthlessly to his advantage; but while he might look young, he never looks innocent. Sebastian remembers the child he was, the dead eyes peering at him from a grimy, blood-splattered face, the force of the child’s indomitable will drowning the last of his childhood.

Ciel reaches out and runs his fingers through Sebastian’s hair, and his hands have lost the baby fat of childhood and are becoming quite elegant, long-fingered and rather dextrous for a boy whose skills are definitely more mental than physical. The touch isn’t hesitant, but Sebastian did not expect it would be. “Your hair isn’t wet. Does water slide off of it, then, like a crow’s feathers?”

“If I do not wish it to be wet,” Sebastian says, with an easy smile, “then it is not wet.”

He blinks in startled surprise when Ciel slaps him, sharply, across the side of the face. “I hate when you smile at me like that.” The mark in his eye begins to burn, his mouth twisting with the anger that flows through the boy like blood in his veins.

Sebastian lowers his eyes, the perfect picture of contrition kneeling before his master. “My lord has never seen fit to order me not to smile.”

“It’s not the smiling that is the problem, Sebastian. You are under orders never to lie to me, are you not? And that smile of yours, that’s lying. Just because there aren’t words doesn’t make it the truth.”

Sebastian’s eyes raise to meet Ciel’s, a sensation in his marked hand that feels like something tickling over his false skin. “The face I wear for you is itself a lie, young master. Would that not make all of my expressions equally as unacceptable?”

Ciel’s stare is unblinking, and the boy doesn’t have hellfire in his eyes but what shines in their mismatched depths is almost as wicked. “When you smile because something amuses you, I can see the tips of your fangs. You laugh like a crow, and when you are angry, your eyes burn. Placidity doesn’t suit you, and I hate it, besides.”

Sebastian catches his young master’s hand in his own and bows, his own seal throwing light onto the tile floor, on the water that’s gathered around them. “Yes, my lord.”

“And now I want a bath,” says Ciel, tugging his hand away and grasping the towel, his gaze shuttering slowly, like curtains drawn to block out the light. “And some warm milk with honey. And, Sebastian, set a fire so that you are not leading me into a cold, dark room when we are finished, here.”

Sebastian has a thousand prepared responses for this sort of demand, from the placating to the patronizing, but he utters none of them. Instead, he places the hand with his contract seal over the empty place on his chest where his heart should be, and inclines his head in the politest of bows.

The air around them is eerie and still, and the wings Ciel cannot see flare open, like a bird displaying its plumage, with the intent to either frighten -- or attract. “There is a time when I shall lead you into the cold and the dark, my lord, but tonight is not that night. So you need not worry.”

Ciel’s mouth curves slightly. “Very good, Sebastian. My bath, now, please.”

Sebastian rises gracefully to his feet, then turns neatly on his heel and walks towards the door that leads to the bedroom.

“And Sebastian,” Ciel calls after him, “do make sure to pick up the feathers off the bathroom floor. I shouldn’t want to slip on one.”

Sebastian’s smile holds more than just a hint of teeth, but he does not turn around.