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The sky, theoretically, was bright and blue outside of the Phantomhive manor, and the air was light and nippy with the chill of November’s eyetooth.
The leaves on the trees had long since browned and soiled, and now decorated the floor like a sheep’s shorn coat, and clogged the manor’s draining pipes like thick balls of cat fur.
Sebastian had unclogged them; once in the middle of October, once at the end of October, and once on the fifteenth just as dawn broke, after he and his master had returned on the night of bête noire.
Sebastian stood over the kitchen sink, with his head down, as he did the dishes, for Bard—insufferably incompetent as always, the foolish bastard—wouldn’t have done them right, anyway. Neither would wretched Mey-Rin.
A glass would be scratched or smashed. A plate would scrape against the side of the sink and chip. A piece of silverware would be bent.
Honestly, it seemed as though only himself was the one most capable enough to do even the simplest of chores in this manor.
Strong, reliable hands slid into the sink water. Sleeves were rolled high, and pink underbellied fingers were put to work against the smears of sauce and grime against a white china plate.
“Are you sure you still wish to do the washing up yourself?”
Sebastian blinked rheumy eyes, his own ashen hands frozen in the warm water as his mind slipped.
“Quite sure.”
“Bard,” he called, without raising his voice, quickly wiping his hands into the tea towel that had been hung on the stove’s door.
“Yeah, Sebastian? Wha’ is it?”
“Do the dishes,” he said, in turn, curtly, “they are filthy and in high numbers.”
“But, you jus’ said that you’d do them—”
“Bard,” Sebastian said, and there was a curl on his lips as an air of mirth rose from his throat, “when I order you to do something, you do it. Do I make myself clear?”
Honestly, the insolence on him, and at the very worst of times, too. It was as if he wasn’t thankful for the position he’d been given, some time ago.
“Uh, yeah. Sure thing, boss,” Bard made an awfully ignorant and yet bashful gesture of rubbing the back of his neck with his elbow pointed high, like a grandfather clock chiming midnight.
“Good,” Sebastian adjusted the lapels of his tailcoat with pinched fingers, and then went past Bard, who was still in the doorway like an absolute nuisance, as if he wanted to keep him waiting for a well anticipated ‘getting out of one’s way’.
“Uh…”
A dumb drone fell out of Bard’s mouth just as Sebastian stepped past him, as if he’d suddenly opened it to catch flies and started to drool in the process.
“Yes, Bard? What is it?” Sebastian did not turn to look at his inferior, for he knew that the sight of the nyaff’s frankly ungroomed, dirty, and—to put it nicely—halfwitted face would surely only work to hinder his butler aesthetic. Infuriate him so thusly, that the perfectness of his afternoon would surely disintegrate.
“Uh…” again with the droning. You’d swear a hive of wasps were nesting in his head instead of a brain. Something that seemed nothing short of the truth. Sebastian clenched his jaw. Flat, human teeth ground against one another, and dull, harmless fingers pressed into his palms. “Me an’ the others’ve been talkin’, and uh…”
Sebastian twisted his head around like a whip. What was taking so long for this absolute zombie to get his words out? He’d been the only one out of the three he’d hired not to require lessons on reading and writing—shouldn’t he be literate and vocal? His speech seemed slower than a snail on salt, damn it.
“Bard,” Sebastian cut across the monotonous bumble, as a means to assist in getting the absolute blister to the end of his dialogue. Honestly, he was doing him a favour, so he had no idea why he’d just flinched. “What is it? I must return to my other chores sometime today, as I’m certain that you’re aware.”
Bard had probably never even heard of a sentence including both ‘must’ and ‘chores’, before now.
“Oh, right—of course—it’s just… me ’nd the others were talkin’ an’…”
“And what?”
“Are ya… feeling alrigh’? Ya seem… outta it, these past couple o’ days. It’s not that Agni bloke, is i’?”
Sebastian contemplated many replies, planned out every possible outcome in each scenario of which he said them, filtering through each one with an unfair consideration of social etiquette. And, as a result, he glared at Bard. And Bard gulped.
“Y’know wha’? Forget it. Forge’ I said anythin’,” he laughed, nervously. It was a rattled repetition between two very obnoxious, dissonant notes.
“The dishes, Bard,” Sebastian said, clenching his fist instead of Bard’s windpipe. As called for by his butler aesthetic, he’d always been very considerate, and such was a fine example. “They will not clean themselves.”
“Yeah- yeah, right, ’course,” Bard babbled, and turned quickly on his heel to slink off like the true coward he was.
Any idiot could man a gun. Any idiot could cook. And any idiot could wash dishes. Any idiot could master all three. Bard deserved to be discharged from his position as a Phantomhive servant. It would be a relief, too: not having to deal with his idiocy anymore, just one burden of many lifted, and making the sun shine just a tad brighter, even for a demon.
Hours were meaningless, to a demon. Absolutely meaningless. They were just a blink of an eye, really, if even graced with the honour of being that.
Hours were nothing. So were days. Months. Years. Even decades, perhaps.
Blink, blink, blink. Gone, gone, gone. It was just like how most tasks rendered virtually impossible by man was, to Sebastian, merely like wiping the dirt off of one’s shoe.
Demons and humans were of different realities. Of opposite social and ethereal planes, only ever daring to intermingle for self-gain.
Sebastian, since the fifteenth, had spent all of his blinks with his eyes open, completing tasks that otherwise would have been ruined by his colleagues. He could not afford to rest, to stop, to close his eyes. Even if it was just for a second, a minute, or an hour, he could not bear to let himself slip, to allow just a moment where he may be branded on the back with a clothes iron.
Currently, Sebastian was polishing the kitchen knives to keep himself sharp and occupied. He could tell that Bard had sharpened them, as of late—they were finely edged but unreflective—and so as the light caught, it slid towards the tip with ease, accentuating its deathliness.
Skin once whole, once soft, and once unblemished was savaged. His stomach excreted blood that drenched the floor; the incisions of a blade each bore deep into his flesh. His grey eyes were wide, staring, but not seeing. Never to see again.
Sebastian almost flinched as the blade of the kitchen knife sheared just a millimetre off of the edge of his shoe, for he had just twisted it away as to avoid any bloody injury.
“He’d protected me,” the prince, Soma, lamented. He was dressed in black, his right hand in a fresh swaddle of bandages. “Oh, how I miss him so much already! I cannot believe that- that- after everything-”
Sebastian reached out and grazed a gloved index finger over the enamel of the golden urn, as though it was a disembodied tendril, only for the prince to snatch it back in disgust and horror.
“Don’t! Don’t you dare—you’ll frighten him!”
Sebastian withdrew his hand immediately.
How could that urn ever have represented him? It had merely been gold and ceramics, dust and ashes.
And, as the saying went, he had been pure gold all the way through. Had he not? He most certainly hadn’t been diamond.
Diamond, regrettably, was impenetrable. Surely, anything below diamond wasn’t worth one’s time, especially a demon’s.
Sebastian bent over and picked the utensil back up and, after another quick polish, placed it back in the knife block alongside its comrades.
“You alrigh’? I heard th’ knife drop,” observed the tenor voice of an idiot lurking in the kitchen entranceway. It seemed as though he could pop up anywhere, like a rat.
“It did not ‘drop’,” Sebastian corrected him, although he himself was wrong. “And shouldn’t you be peeling the potatoes for the master’s lunch?”
“Well, yeah, but—”
“But nothing,” Sebastian interrupted him only because he was tired of his excuses. He was always coming up with excuses, these days. “You are to prepare the master’s lunch, for it is the master that comes first, not whatever whim may tickle your fancy at any given time. Do I make myself clear?”
“Stop tha’,” Bard spoke back, petulantly.
Sebastian narrowed his eyes. Usually that put him back in his place. “I beg your pardon?”
“I said, stop it,” Bard was defiant, today, and foolishly so. As of late, folly after folly had been rolling out from him and the other servants alike, but this was a new low of complete stupidity, and Sebastian would quite easily give him that.
“Bard,” he said, smoothly, as if he were the embodiment of a bowl of warm milk and honey, “I shall give you three second to redact whatever it is that seems to be crossing your mind.”
“Yeah, our duty lies with the master ’n’ all that, but quit actin’ like a machine, Sebastian,” Bard proceeded, insufferably. Sebastian wrung the chequered tea towel in his tightly clenched hands, as though it was Bard’s very neck. “It ain’t good fer ya.”
“Oh, please,” he couldn’t help but sneer, “how would a man hardly able to tell when a chicken is done roasting in the oven possibly be capable of knowing what is good for me?”
“You an’ I are both men, here, Sebastian,” he said, as if they were friends. How degrading. “An’ I know even the strongest o’ men needa let it out once in a while. It ain’t good t’ jus’… keep it in.”
What complete dribble, is what Sebastian thought immediately. He wanted to say it, but it would have been unbecoming for a Phantomhive butler, let alone the one in charge of the unfortunate, braindead underlings.
“Don’t be ridiculous,” he defended himself, although what was there any need to defend himself from such a lowly being for? “I haven’t the slightest clue of what you’re trying to infer.”
“Well, you can be all fancy about it, but it don’t make you anymore human,” Bard said, and Sebastian wanted nothing more than to retort and bask in the bitter irony of that statement. “It ain’t healthy, you know.”
Clenching his fists, Sebastian glowered at Bard, and then spent no time waiting for him to step aside to exit the kitchen. His own sturdy shoulder hit the petulant imp’s chest, and he flinched foolishly.
“Trust me, Sebastian,” Bard called after him, seemingly and infuriatingly undeterred, “it ain’t.”
Sebastian returned to him, with a smile so bright it was intended to come across as impossibly condescending so that their one-sided conversation may end, at last. “Neither are those cigarettes of yours,” he chirped, merriment saturating his vocal chords, filling the corners of the room with spots of damp, “and yet here you are, smoking like a chimney! Good day, to you, Bard.”
“Wha’- hey! Wai’ a minute! You know full well tha’s not wha’ I meant!”
Of course it wasn’t, but whatever Bard had been insinuating, it couldn’t possibly have been anything intelligent. It was, after all, Bard.
And, so, with white gloves turned red, Sebastian left.
“It appears as though your master finds me intimidating,” Sebastian smiled to him, albeit slightly.
“My master is a child at heart,” he said, almost fondly, “unlike yours. I believe he does like you, and appreciate all that you do for Lord Ciel, but…”
“But?”
“Forgive me, Sebastian,” he said, solemnly, all cheer fallen from his face like a veil, and so Sebastian reflected his serious countenance, “but even you must admit that at even your friendliest of moments, you do not exactly emit the warmest of energy.”
“Do you find me frightening?” Sebastian looked into his eyes from the foot that they stood apart, his red eyes looking into his steel grey ones. Sometimes, looking into those oculus prisons were like being enraptured by the presence of another demon, without the territorial dispute.
No human could ever have competed with him. He was like a god, a demon, something beyond mortal. And yet, he was encased in a fragile, human body—as mortal—and one day he would pay the price for it.
“No,” a sweet, warm smile gently shaped his lips; he was like the genuine embodiment of warm milk and honey, soothing and delicious. “I do not find you the slightest bit frightening.”
Sebastian, at the time, hadn’t really known whether he should have been relieved, or not. Shouldn’t every human fear a demon, their natural predator?
“You are the opposite of me, it seems,” he then said as opposed to thanks or further inquiry, because he didn’t wish to hear anymore. It was all that was truly needed.
“How do you mean?”
“Your energy,” Sebastian elucidated, with a new smile, echoing his peer’s saccharine nature, “I sense it is warm. Warmer than anything that I have ever felt before.”
A human and a demon. Energies of both warm and cold. A mortal and immortal. Silver and gold. A wolf and a cheetah. Stone and ruby. Fire and ice. Summer and winter.
How tragic.
The clocks needed checking. The rugs needed adjusting. The rooms needed dusting. The rosebushes needed trimming. The fireplaces needed tending. His master needed to be fed and watered.
Sebastian had kept himself busy through the day, as he often did—especially now—but when the dreaded nighttime fell, Sebastian, as always, was left alone, exactly how he liked it.
Demons were solitary creatures, after all.
Usually, Sebastian would await the sunrise in his room for an hour or so after preparing the manor for the following day, and a few hours were nothing to a demon, after all.
Nothing worth mentioning, at least.
Yet, Sebastian could no longer bear to await the sunrise in his room. Currently, he sat at the tail of the dining room table, only staring between the empty chair far across from him and his fidgeting hands. He couldn’t be in his room. Being next to his bed was like swallowing a revving death scythe whole, for there had been some notable instances that he had spent with him in that bed.
Hours were nothing to a demon, and yet everything to a human. He’d seen humans lose track of time and then act upset or merely surprised at the concept that hours had passed.
And, as godly as he—Agni—had been, he had still been… human. Now only ever having once been was a sure side effect to that, was it not?
And, as a human, he—as versatile and as fit as what he was—did not, in some aspects, have the right amount of stamina to match Sebastian. It was perhaps the one thing that Sebastian could ever say that he—‘he’ being not himself, but rather… him—lacked in.
And yet, he would never have asked for an exchange. For this aspect of him to be fixed. Never. It wasn’t an imperfection, it was a virtue. Agni had been virtuous.
To Sebastian, while their time together in such ways was short—perhaps impossibly so—he treasured it, so. He could never trade it for anything else, longer or rougher or whatever alteration one might be able to present. Nothing would convince him to let go of what they had. Nothing, for what they had was something along the lines of heaven incarnate.
Only twice they had ever given their bodies to one another. Once, the first time, during their stay after he and his master had returned from Noah’s Ark Circus, and the second had been to say their potential goodbye to one another when he had mentioned possibly revisiting Bengal with his prince, Soma.
He’d been very noble in whatever bond they had shared together. Too respectful for his own good, Sebastian sometimes had lamented to himself.
Towards the end of his and Prince Soma’s first stay at the manor, he and Sebastian had—unregrettably, and admittedly—held hands. That had been the extent of any physicality between them, then, for he—Agni—had claimed to be a gentleman.
They’d held hands. A notion that was absolutely abhorrent to a demon for its chaste and sweet nature. They had held hands, his right hand—unwrapped, like a Christmas present, for the occasion—against Sebastian’s ungloved left.
The insignia of demonology against the insignia of a goddess. It was so taboo that Sebastian felt just as uneasy as he did excitable, for it felt so forbidden and intoxicating, all at once.
Sebastian hadn’t let him see his contract—concealing it with calculated angles and twists of the wrist had been difficult, not for its difficulty but for its nature—and had given an excuse about his black fingernails that he hadn’t asked for.
In fact, Sebastian hadn’t been able to finish his excuse without Agni—oh, how his beautiful name bit back with an adder’s venom—lifting one of his fingers and simply, sweetly, gingerly, kissing the tip as if to tell him that it did not matter. That he had nothing to give reason for.
Sebastian had never been as sweet as what Agni was. The weight in his chest increased at that. Remorse was a fickle thing. Was this remorse, keeping him alert and restless at night? Or, was it something else entirely?
He’d never told Agni what he was, either. He’d wanted to—oh, so many times had he wanted to—but he had never done it. It was like a barrier between them at times, in Sebastian’s mind, filling some comments with an irony sick and twisted and unwanted.
Sebastian had fantasised about devouring his current master’s soul as soon as he could, and then telling him—Agni—the truth. Making the Phantomhive manor their own or building him a new one from scratch just because he could. Convincing him to make a contract with him, and asking if three wishes that would guarantee their time together well spent, give their tryst a goal that, within a clause that he would pretend not to notice, would or could never be met.
And, somehow, he would try to convert him. One way, or another, if their contract was not enough or as the years ticked farther away from the prime of his life, then he’d find a way to turn him into an immortal, so that they could have been one forever. So, that he could preserve the holy creation that was… Agni.
Because, selfishly, Sebastian could not bear the thought of ever coming to the day, after merely blinking, of Agni’s passing. And yet, here he was, at the dining room table, sulking like a spoilt child over something that—evidently—was never meant to be.
The silence of the night was broken by the screams of terror from his master’s room. Humans were always screaming, Sebastian thought as he stood up, from the moment they took their first breath outside of the womb to the moment they took their very last.
Humans always screamed. Were demons ever allowed to do the same?
“You look exhausted, y’know,” Bard said from the kitchen doorway, leaning against the frame. “Ya ready to talk, yet, at least?”
Sebastian turned and looked in the hindrance’s direction for just a moment. “What is there to talk about?” he asked. “How you constantly seem to be pestering me, as of late?”
“About wha’s troublin’ ya,” stated Bard, as if it were obvious, for it was, and he’d simply not detected the sarcasm in Sebastian’s tone.
Sebastian thought over Bard’s previous words and decided that he would not acknowledge nor would he question them. Demons never got exhausted. It was simple fact, so how Bard had decided that he looked so was beyond even his understanding.
“Look,” Bard, ever the social cue-ignorant annoyance, continued, and Sebastian felt his presence step closer into the kitchen from the doorway, “don’t think we haven’ noticed ’ow ya don’ go to bed ’til late. It’s like ya don’t sleep. An’ we’ve made our peace wit’ tha’ ’cause it don’t ever seem to affect ya. But… we’ve noticed ya don’t keep to yer room anymore, either. Somethin’ in there you don’ like?”
An hour, to a demon, was just a blink. So, how long had it taken for Sebastian’s fist to involuntarily fly into the wall just a hair’s breadth from his face? Brick and paint were chipped and cracked, and a small river of blood ran up the sleeve of his undershirt and tailcoat.
Bard was shrunk under Sebastian’s heaving chest, dull-coloured eyes wide and mouth ajar, and from this sight alone, Sebastian could deduct that he had done something erratic. Something he shouldn’t have done.
He pulled away from the unworthy craven before him, and then inspected either side of his wavering, bloody hand, as to check his soiled glove for any holes.
Upon remembering that he was—unfortunately—still alive, Bard seemed to be checking the hole in the wall behind him. “Wow,” he awed, but his voice came across dry and lacklustre for what it was trying to represent. “How long have you been holding that one in?”
“I must say, Sebastian,” he said, as the two prepared the dining table for their masters to dine together in an hour’s time, “your skills as a butler are rather admirable.”
Sebastian looked at him, at first, and repeated what he’d only just said in his mind. Then, he ran an analytic in his mind on the type of smile that he’d used. A smile like warm milk and honey, perhaps with a dash of extra sugar.
“Why, thank you,” he said, eventually, after determining just how sweet and ameliorating his peer’s praise had felt, just like how a mortal may view a summer’s day with dandelion clocks amidst the daisy and buttercup fields, for it was only ever an annual treasure. “I am simply one hell of a butler, after all.”
“You put yourself down, so,” said he in turn, and Sebastian looked into his thoughtful, opaque eyes from across the table. He was like a a flower field in summer, wasn’t he? Green, and golden, and white. Rich in colour, like abstract art, but ever the wonder, for his eyes reflected that of a winter’s storm, and not the fresh blue sky of August.
“However do you mean?”
“Referring to your work as sinful,” he replied. “It seems as though this phrase that you use is a means of reflecting praise.”
Was this what being concerned was? Sebastian smiled. Something about being worried over seemed like there was a hearth in his chest, keeping his very core warm. “You needn’t worry, Agni. I can assure you, it is merely a… saying, of mine.”
He hummed in understanding. It was a sweet, roasted sound. “Like, a mantra?”
“Yes,” Sebastian released the better half of a chuckle, his own voice quite mirthful, “I suppose it is.”
“Then, I am to agree!” he declared, proudly. “You are simply one… hell…” his voice cracked, as if the very mention of the place would split open the earth and drag them both down into the fiery pits thereof, “of a butler.”
Sebastian hummed in assent, and went to the head of the table where he returned to placing his master’s finely polished silverware.
A demon and a saint. How ironic.
“I do not know what you mean,” Sebastian said, brandishing a new pair of gloves from inside of his tailcoat and replacing the other pair with them after washing his right hand’s knuckles under the tap.
“I think ya do,” Bard had, quite stupidly, like a stray cur, followed him into the kitchen. “I know ya ain’t stupid or nothin’, Sebastian. So don’ start actin’ like ya are, all o’ a sudden jus’ ’cause it suits ya.”
“I can assure you,” Sebastian said, slowly, without turning to meet Bard’s stony, unintelligible gaze, “I am not.”
“I wouldn’t be so sure of that, if I were you,” the imbecile said this as though he was lolling over a set of options to some grand scheme, and somebody had just proposed something completely against the grain.
“Well, you aren’t,” Sebastian stated the obvious, and then added, “so you can leave, now.”
There was nothing for quite some time. Bard, the idiot, did not intend on leaving, it seemed, and so Sebastian decided that he would instead.
“You know,” Bard said, as if he’d been anticipating his departure. Sebastian eyed him suspiciously, egging him to continue. “Back home in America, my wife used t’ knit when she was stressed. Used to say it helped.”
Sebastian turned to him cautiously. He often forgot that Bard had been deemed competent and aware enough to be married. He often forgot that someone had actually found something in him worth marrying. After all, beyond manning a gun well enough, there wasn’t much nuance to his character. No vivid colours, no humility, nothing apparent enough to compare to a sanctuary, and he was rough and calloused around the edges, and a bit in the middle.
“I ain’t too into it, myself,” he added, rubbing the back of his neck like a man absolute clown, “but I’ve seen ya do stuff like that as it is, so maybe it’d help ya with ya… y’know, ya problem.”
Why was he so insistent that he had a problem? Because he didn’t. Having a problem would mean having an imperfection, and having an imperfection would mean that he was not adhering to his butler aesthetic. So, no, most definitely not—he didn’t not have a problem.
So, after all of this evident proof, why did Bard still think that he did? This is why he never listened to Bard’s excuses. He had nothing to say that was worth listening to.
But, he was like a fruitfly, floating around his eyelashes like the life-sucking pest he truly was. He would not take ‘no’ for an answer. Not with the new beliefs he’d been holding for the past week.
How Sebastian detested every moment of being here, in this manor, confined to a human form and lumbered with complete idiots, and a brat to whom he had to adhere. How he longed for him to return, for clarity.
“Very well, Bard,” Sebastian said, just to humour him, “although, I very much doubt it will work.”
“Really? Excellent!” he exclaimed, before frowning, suddenly. “Uh… you got any wool?”
Sebastian could smell everything from a human in a matter of milliseconds. Blood, skin, soul… it was all there, wrapped into one delicious encasing of flesh and bone, fresh for a demon’s taking, like a picturesque bowl of fruit.
Well, many humans were foul and impure, and you couldn’t really determine where they had been. And yet, the human in front of Sebastian, now—the human whom he watched sleep so soundly, with an easy, warm sensation in his own chest—was so fine and pure, he should have burnt Sebastian upon first touch.
And yet…
Sebastian reached out, impulsively, and trailed his left index finger down his new lover’s soft, bare arm. How he longed for his hands to be allowed to burst into long, demonic claws, to drag long, red marks into his soft, delicate skin. And yet…
As Agni turned his head and smiled in his sleep at the gentleness of his harmless, human fingers, he had to redact that thought. Being like this, dully-edged and otherwise docile, was—admittedly—completely fine, for now.
He could still recall his intoxicating human scents. Vanilla for the flesh, coconut for the hair, chocolate for the blood, and curry powder for the soul. It was enough to steal a breath from his chest, if he ever had one to begin with.
The rejuvenating scent filled the bedroom in heady musk and the residue of sweat. Now, as all activity nestled down, Sebastian remained awake, vigilantly watching as his new lover slept peacefully, lest one of their masters roused from their own slumbers and started to call for them.
Such is the strain of a butler, after all.
Sebastian stared down at his lover, Agni, with a smile completely lacking in wickedness or mischief; his brows were relaxed but lowered; his cheeks were moderately warmer than usual; and he tucked his long hair behind his ear, slowly, fingers itching to twirl the split-ends suggestively as his crimson eyes remained glued to the human before him.
He, a near-omnipotent demon, an immortal, had just laid with a mere mortal—and a human, no less (oh, the shame… and yet no such shame arrived)—so, shouldn’t he—Agni—have been kept awake from his admiration, his dehabilitating worship and gratitude for him? And, yet… here Sebastian was, thanking the some religious figure for such fortune, laying propped up on an elbow, holding his own head, as he looked over at his absolute saint and deity of a new lover with nothing short of bliss and care and adoration.
How could such a holy, powerful soul be housed in such a fragile human casket? Sebastian lamented to himself. How he longed to reveal himself, but—for the first time in all of the centuries he had been alive—feared the alluding threat of fear and rejection.
But, that was fine, for now. As long as he could stay here, forever, watching over his darling new treasure, his incredible peer, and—again—new lover, was anything to ever be questioned? To be doubted and changed, as if it wasn’t blessed enough?
‘Blessed’. Yes. That was the word to describe this. To describe him. Agni. A word no demon was to utter without immense displeasure: blessed.
Agni was… blessed. And, Sebastian was blessed with this moment, and he longed to forever be deemed holy enough to taste its sweet nectar, before he is to put it into his lunch box, and move on, to begin sweetness with Agni anew.
Sebastian could not believe that he was here, sat at the head of the kitchen’s table with Bard to his right, a bag of wool between them and a set of knitting needles in his hands as Bard fiddled with one for crocheting.
“She never used t’ do this one ’s much as knitting,” said Bard as he fiddled with the needle and a wad of sun-yellow wool. Sebastian eyed the movement, and contemplated for just something short of nanosecond if Bard would care to switch needles with him, but quickly discarded the thought, for he’d already began the base of whatever creation he let his hands weave, and wished not to soil it.
“Do you knit often?” It was a silly, mis-conceptualised question. A feeble attempt at small talk, as humans often did.
“Nah,” Bard said, and it was almost like a gastric emission. Crude and airy, and Sebastian watched as he stretched back in his seat, hands behind his head as he discarded the sun-yellow wool and crocheting needle. “Never got the hang of it. You?”
Another foolish ask; small talk was quite a fiend when you were too big for it. Perhaps not too big, these days, but rather too old. Too worn. Sebastian had to second-guess himself at that—he was a demon. Demons did not wear and they most certainly did not get old. That was a human’s job.
A job that some humans only ever completed in half.
“Any butler worth his salt would know how to knit,” he replied, softly.
“Ya don’t have t’ keep sayin’ that,” said Bard in turn. His arms were now crossed in front of him as he leant towards the table, feet on the ground once again. Sebastian side-eyed him so he may have been so inclined to continue. “We get it, ya perfect.”
“I am perfect,” Sebastian said, in a way that didn’t sound like himself. It lacked his particular, tasteful sycophancy, but Bard didn’t seem as keen to point it out.
“Ya don’t have to be,” Bard remarked, and Sebastian—stifling himself—turned back to the bag of wool on the table, and snatched out a darling everglade colour. It was close to being therapeutic, like a summer’s field, if Sebastian didn’t find it deluged, and almost marshy. “Not with the master no longer around, that is.”
He didn’t get it. Like the idiot he was, he was not enlightened on their relationship. On why Sebastian was the way that he was, and why he needed to be just that. Of course, why would he? There was no way he could possibly be told, or figure it out for himself, because he was an absolute idiot.
The sleeves of woollen everglade Sebastian been winding around the first two fingers of his hand almost strained painstakingly as he went to tense it into a fist, but restrained such an explicit action.
“Y’alright?”
“I’m fine,” Sebastian said, hotly, and without another word, or another glance to his current bane, he proceeded to knit away mindlessly, looking to create something he wasn’t particularly fond of putting his mind to.
His creation was, for the most part, kept everglade and light brown. Sebastian’s hand then wavered closely to the white wool, like a fatal attraction. Sebastian found himself stung with an energy he’d never known a ball of wool to possess.
Bard picked it up for him, completely unfazed by its harm, and then held it out for him to take. Sebastian’s mask of a face must have been a picture.
“Yer not,” said Bard, determinedly. “I’ve seen men like you, Sebastian.”
Sebastian’s tongue felt hyperactive at that, in his mouth, for that would have meant more demons around. And the last thing he needed was a brawl with another demon, one that could come after his master.
“Oh?” he asked, tightly, straining the words from his throat. “How so?”
“Men that’ve seen the worst o’ it,” he elucidated, and Sebastian’s tense nature deflated into annoyance. He knew precisely where this was going—and it was really a place where the conversation needn’t go. “An’ when they need ’elp, they say they don’t.”
“Well, unlike those men, I don’t,” Sebastian said, “you must have me confused with the young master.”
Bard gave a short, windy laugh. It was more like a huff, than anything amused. “Yeah, well… the master gets help.”
Sebastian gritted his teeth in reply, in an effort to keep them flat and humane. He was far too aware that his hands were still working away on his woollen everglade treasure, giving its light brown growth a snowcap.
“You don’,” Bard added, pointedly. His dull eyes flicked down to Sebastian’s work for a moment, but he said nothing. “An’ I think you should.”
“I am the head butler of the Phantomhive estate,” I am a demon, “I am your boss, and the Earl Phantomhive’s most trusted”—demon—“ally.”
“You’re still a man,” Bard said. There was an attempt. “An’ I know you ain’t one exactly—we’ve all noticed that, ’n’ made our peace with i’. But, yer still with emotions of ya own. An’ clearly you need help with ’em.”
“I don’t need help,” Sebastian snarled, and what a snarl it was. He could even feel his top lip curl and his eye-teeth threatening to point into oral daggers, efficient for penetrating human skin.
“Ehhh,” Bard made the most irritating noise Sebastian had ever heard in all his centuries of being alive. So annoying, that he was just a membrane’s breadth away from ripping out of his own flesh-and-none confines to slash him into three, perfectly defined pieces. “I beg t’ differ with ya.”
“Oh, please,” Sebastian crossed his legs suddenly from under the table as he leaned back in his seat in malevolent complacency, his hands still working aimlessly on his little woollen project. His knee almost hit the wood. “Tell me how you could possibly suggest otherwise.”
“The men I’ve fought with back in America,” Bard said, slowly, as if Sebastian’s motor skills were now significantly stunted. Sebastian felt his chest twinge in offence. “They’ve all said the same—they’ve seen the worst of it, like their own friends an’ family bein’ shot—and you can tell. They stare off int’ space, they get angry. Somethin’ about their eyes, too. I can’t describe it, but once you see that look in a man’s eyes, you’ll never forget it. They’ll never get quite right, after, either. You haven’ been quite right since tha’ Agni fella died. You were real close to him, weren’t ya?”
“Both the prince and I were able to make good friends,” He said, smiling gently, lovely.
Sebastian was taken by surprise from this sudden declaration of their acquaintance. “Friends… is it?” he repeated, slowly. “No one has ever called me that before.” He was a demon after all, and as such, he was often viewed as a foe to all. How peculiar to be called something to close, so intimate. So warm.
Sebastian set his aching jaw. An odd stinging sensation overrun the back of his throat like a nest of hornets. Was Bard truly implying that Sebastian was phased by violence? By death? How barbarically absurd. For him to be so, it would have required fragile morals, which—as a natural-born hunter—he did not possess. Perish the thought if he did.
In a way, he could declare kinship to psychopaths—an intrigue for them, if you will—for they were like demons in human bodies, doing the work of a demon for entertainment, and no meal in return. One could say that psychopaths were the demons of the human world, if one was severely disconnected from the real world.
Demons in the fragile encasement of human bodies… he could have said the same about Him, if he were a demon and not a saint. His nature was greatly contradictory of his power, and Sebastian guessed this was how humans viewed angels.
“And I thought your foolishness couldn’t be any more becoming of your character,” Sebastian gave an incredulous chuckle and pinched the bridge of his nose, putting his knitting on hold to do so. Shaking his head, he returned to it, albeit at a more stunted, hesitant pace. “Honestly, it disgusts me.”
“It’s jus’ a part of the grievin’ process,” Bard said, with the pretence of wist. Sebastian could have slapped him.
Instead, he seethed, and his knitting increased in pace. “I can’t possibly see why that would be the case.” On his needles, he replaced the white wool with cream, and he could sense that Bard was watching him do so.
“I ain’t gunna try forcin’ you t’ talk,” he said, scratching the back of his head in apprehension. “But I just think you’re to know that you should… an’ that… ya can. Whether tha’s to me, or Tanaka, ’r even—gosh, I dunno—Mey-Rin. Snake’s probably a good listener, too, seein’ as he don’t speak much. There ain’t a lot o’ us ’round here, but we’re all willin’ to help out when or if’n one of us needs it.”
Sebastian stared at his woollen creation instead of replying. It felt plain. Everglade, white, cream, and brown, with twin storm grey circles… it needed… the colour tainting Sebastian’s mind was mustard, but there wasn’t a ball of mustard wool—not even the distantly similar alpine—only yellow.
Yellow would clash horrendously against the darker colours—it would give the figurine a pop that it’s preferred brethren could also, but to an insufferable degree. Sebastian could feel his blood boil at the yellow wool, for using it would ruin his indecipherable project. Yellow was such a bombastic colour.
And so, Sebastian thrust the diseased doll onto the table and left the kitchen. He needed to prepare the dining room for the master’s dinner, anyway.
Even when one’s master was close to as insufferable as one’s incompetent staff, dying for that master was still one of the greatest acts one could do for their master.
To guard one’s master when injury or death seems inevitable is hellishly honourable—as a butler, one was to always put themselves first in the line or battle, but their master first in terms of safety.
As a butler, one’s job was always unexpected, from dutifully serving to instinctively protecting.
A butler was fiercely loyal and fierce in battle. A butler was reserved and eloquent, elegant, elegiac, with at least elementary skills in defence. No butler worth his salt would leave his master in the hands of peril.
Dying for one’s master was the greatest thing a butler could do… so why did it feel so selfish?
Sleep, to a demon, was entirely recreational. Such leisure clouded one’s mind after a prolonged instance of indulging in it. Hence why Sebastian never allowed himself to sleep, and instead opted to keep surveillance over the estate and his master and staff within.
He’d only used his bed when he was ordered to after his fight with the Undertaker on the Campania, and when Agni had visited.
It had been a select few times—too few and far between, he could have said—but they’d each been positively blissful.
Such an instance had been when Agni had convinced Sebastian to lay atop him, so he could play with his hair.
“You have lovely hair,” He said, in a hushed lull. Sebastian, not particularly tired but most certainly relaxed, had his eyes closed. His right hand was unbandaged, bare, and being ran through Sebastian’s hair, fingertips pressing gingerly into his scalp and bringing form the ecstasy of intimacy. “I have always admired it—it’s thickness and volume is extraordinary.”
Sebastian barely replied for most of the night, like that. He was too enthralled in the sensation of being tamed—if just for the night, if even as long as that—being handled in such a gentle, caring manner, that it was as though he was a piece of fine silverware in the hands of none other than himself. An exemplar butler.
Sebastian barely fought the near-purrs that exited his throat and sinuses whenever he stretched or shifted or exhaled. If He had noticed, He hadn’t said anything on the matter. Only smiled. Only spoken sweet nothings, which Sebastian counted in his mind, set on repaying him one day.
If anyone deserved a demon’s repayment, it was Him.
Sebastian looked in the mirror as he fixed his lapels.
With tired eyes, he watched himself fix the buttons on his vest, and then the chain of his pocket-watch.
With tired eyes, he watched as he himself tucked a part of his hair behind his ear.
With tired eyes, he watched his tired eyes. Eyes were a window to a human’s soul.
With tired eyes, he remembered that it was a good thing demons didn’t have souls.
And, so, with tired eyes, he left the room.
The sky seemed darker after Sebastian and his master exited the townhouse, for the sun had gone out. The scene they’d escaped from was suffocatingly and blindingly poignant , even for a demon.
The was Agni now laid, motionless, with a doorknob still stuck in his clutches was… Sebastian did not know the word for what it was.
As a demon, Sebastian had a near-unlimited supply of strength. He could apply whatever amount willingly, whenever he needed, and yet even he struggled to pry Agni’s death-grip away from the door so that they may have interrogated Prince Soma on what had happened.
The scene was cold and red. Prince Soma rattled with incoherent sobbing, at first, and even then the full tale could not be retold. Perhaps it was better that way.
Sebastian had held Agni’s ruined, mortal body close and spoken to him about his valiance. Sebastian kept himself composed, but inside his perfected exoskeleton he felt himself writing like a tormented bear in barbed chains.
Sebastian remembered trying to fit his hand into Agni’s. Trying to replace his own gloved hand with the splintered doorknob as his own master tended to His before he did.
Agni’s eyes were bloody and shut. Streaks of blood had run down His face. Agni had been one to cry tears of blood. Sebastian, wrenching himself into corrosive knots from the inside out, knew that in His last moments of pain, Agni had cried and shut his eyes.
He hadn’t cried out of fear of Himself, Sebastian knew—for it was Agni in question, and not some irrefutable coward picked up from the streets—but perhaps in hope for His master’s safety, then finally closing eyes in acceptance.
Sebastian, as a demon, forgot not. As a demon, he was plagued with the everlasting memory of Agni’s dead body in his arms, and of later sucking His blood out of his clothes.
Sebastian, as a demon, did not sleep.
Sebastian, as a demon, spent every night awake.
Sebastian, as a friend, spent every night awake with the memory of his friend’s bloody death.
Sebastian, as a demon, did not need rest.
Sebastian, as a friend, was restless.
Sebastian, as a demon, did not have friends.
This was why demons did not make friends. They did not need friends. They did not need love, or any other human need, for demons were not humans.
Sebastian bid his dues to Agni every night in his mind. Aloud, he’d bid them to his corpse and his already-reaped soul. A soul too pure for even a demon’s foul tongue.
Agni had been the epitome of all butlers. Not even Sebastian could take his place, in more ways than one.
So, he would live on for centuries to come, with the memory of Agni. Never had a human been so perfect.
Sebastian, as a demon and as a friend, would never forget.