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“The fact that you're allergic to them is beside the issue,” Sebastian said. Ciel watched him set the bone china pot on the rosewood pier table, then gently tap the rim of the untouched cup and saucer he'd put down earlier. Steam no longer rose from the cup in thin silver tendrils, and the scent of jasmine had long ago faded from the air. “Shall I re-heat your tea, my lord?”
“Not as far as I'm concerned.” Ciel folded his arms across his chest, his green velvet suit making a soft hissing sound as he moved. He wasn't going to answer the question—if he wanted tea, he would've drunk his first cup, and Sebastian knew it. The only thing Ciel was interested in was the topic at hand, and how he would not be swayed.
“My lord.” That soft, silken tone; Sebastian leaned down toward Ciel's armchair to murmur, “Once again you are the only one of us who can pull it off. If I tried, they would know immediately.”
Gritting his teeth, Ciel inhaled deeply and then sent out a soft, whistling breath into the silent sitting room. Sebastian was of course correct, but that didn't make things easier or more tasteful. For a second, Ciel thought he caught the sound of a soft, triumphant huff from the figure to his left, but it was so quick it was gone by the time he registered it. Glancing up sharply, he narrowed his eye at his butler.
“If there was any other way,” Sebastian said, the barest curl at the corners of his mouth. “But you yourself said you would solve the case by any means necessary.”
“You don't have to remind me. I know what I said.” Damn. Ciel wondered why he was always so compelled to make that promise. Trust Sebastian to pick it apart and make it literal. Any means necessary; he should have known the moment those words spilled out of his mouth, the situation would spin off into the absurd. It always did, and it usually resorted in juvenile antics such as this. Dressing up was something girls did—girls like Lizzy and her friends. Not lords. Least of all the lord of Phantomhive. Gah.
Although Ciel had originally thought his masquerade at Viscount Druitt's ball the most ridiculous task he'd been forced to perform on behalf of her Majesty the Queen, he was starting to rethink the levels of insanity involved in his job.
“Then,” Sebastian said, his cool breath wending through the hair at the top of Ciel's head, ruffling the shorter strands, “I shall make the preparations.” A low bow. “Excuse me.”
Excuse him. Yes, he was excused; Ciel wanted to excuse Sebastian from the very house, excuse him to infinity. This was partially the demon's fault, after all, for suggesting it in the first place.
With a frown and a soft “Ch,” Ciel stirred his cold tea until his wrist ached.
* * *
Insanity levels were at full strain; all pistons were go. The mansion felt too hot all of a sudden, and—well, it was to be expected, really, though no less annoying. Ciel closed his eyes and stole a deep, silent breath as voices floated up the main staircase to reach his ears in his hiding place just out of view. The soft, resonant tenor that was Sebastian, the vast-chested chuckle that was Bard, Finnian's enthusiastic tone, and Meilin's occasional squeals.
Ch, how did he end up in these situations? No matter how many times Ciel ran it through his mind, he couldn't figure it out—how one such as he, born into high social status, could be reduced to... to this. But one thing he did know was that Sebastian had a pristine-gloved hand in it. In everything. That the demon—his demon, for the time being at least—was no doubt extracting an inordinate amount of glee from the idea of his master trussed up in the most uncomfortable characterisation yet.
This is for the sake of the mission, he reminded himself, though the thought did little to put him at ease. Plus he was beginning to itch.
“My lord?” Sebastian called, knowing and silky. Well, there was no point dallying now, not when Sebastian knew Ciel was lurking. Besides, lords did not lurk in their own homes.
Putting his best foot forward--and trying not to think of it as putting his best paw forward--Ciel walked out onto the landing to a symphony of utter, stunned silence. He did not spare a single godforsaken glance at the people waiting below, and alighted the stairs with as much grace and poise as a teenager could muster. Eyes downcast, he counted the thirteen steps to the marble floor. Thirteen—one for every year of his life.
The old grandfather clock in the foyer nattered to itself in its rhythmic, rheumy tick tock, tick tock. The deep, grumbling sound struck off the walls and high ceilings, filling the entire universe with ticking.
“Yeep!” Meilin said. It sounded like the noise had been trying to escape for quite some time.
Ciel's face pulled into a taut cringe. “Nobody is to say a word, not one word.”
Meilin let out another wee, high-pitched squeak, and then Ciel heard her clapping her hand over her mouth to trap any further exclamations.
“Don't you all have work to do?” he said, still not looking at them and instead glaring at the tall clock across the foyer. Their silence was deafening, starting to ring in his ears and his head, louder than Grandfather Time's tuneless song. “I saw some dust on a picture frame upstairs,” he added, “and there are weeds in the courtyard, and I smelled smoke from the kitchens all the way up in my room.”
All right, yes, he was grasping at straws, but rather that than stand on display like some toy from the Funtom factory. It was going to be hard enough sneaking from his carriage to the Langham Hotel, and he had no idea how he was going to make it from the hotel's lobby to the lift that would deposit him in the underground level, where the... soiree... was to take place.
Nobles; Ciel hated the lot of them. Nothing but a bunch of depraved vultures, hungry to indulge in their twisted fantasies. Ciel was under no illusion he was any better, but he had the decency to conduct his own business with as much discretion as possible. Large social events were not discreet. Not when you were dressed as the prized bloody catboy.
“Ahh, excuse us!” cried Finnian.
“Yes—eep! Excuse us.” That clapping noise again as Meilin covered her mouth.
“Er,” said Bard. “Er, yeah.”
Ciel clenched his jaw.
The servants' footsteps pattered in opposite directions as they scurried to their respective areas, but as far as Ciel was concerned the damage had been done. He would've wagered a hefty amount of money on Sebastian having congregated them at the foot of the stairs—there was no other reason Ciel could think of for them to be lingering at this time of night.
Once the servants were out of sight and earshot, Ciel released a long, slow breath. Though it wasn't with relief. Everything was still way too tight for his liking.
A bizarre, unfamiliar weight was falling all around, a tension that filled the foyer with hot, fizzing energy—reminiscent of electricity from a brewing storm. Swift heat began crawling up Ciel's back beneath the tight black leather vest, dampening his skin with sweat. Every minute movement pulled the leather over him, stretching it; it slithered and moulded and shifted with him, warm and raw like the skin of a beast. Ugh. Ciel wanted out of the costume, and that was all he knew. Although the question of how, exactly, he was going to last the evening should have been foremost in his mind, the prickling atmosphere was distracting him from solid thought.
The source of the tension was now clear—it amassed where the man to Ciel's right was standing, the man who was not a man, but a creature partially hidden in the ornate shadow patterns cast down between the stair banisters.
Ciel did not fear him and he never had, but there was something different about Sebastian tonight. Something unusual--darker and watchful in ways Sebastian had never been before.
“You'd better have my cloak ready. I'm not setting foot outside in just this.” Oh, he wanted to fold his arms over himself—they twitched to reach and wrap around his middle—but no, Ciel wasn't going to give Sebastian the satisfaction of seeing his discomfort. “Sebastian?” For the first time since reaching the foyer, Ciel looked up at his butler and paused. Sebastian was barely more than a tall silhouette etched into the darkness beneath the stairs, so painfully still. “My cloak?”
“Yesss...” A whisper creeping at the edges like burning paper, almost melodic and wistful, winding and rising and falling and sibilant. Ciel imagined Sebastian tasting, licking at the air with his tongue, and Ciel's own mouth drained of saliva.
Ridiculous. Ciel pursed his lips and reached up to adjust his headband. The little pointed ears attached to it stood up in twin furry peaks, taut and yet smooth to the touch. A moment's fiddling with the kitten ears, and Ciel was sure they were in the right position. The other thing he was sure of was Sebastian's unwavering gaze. And Sebastian's voice—what had been wrong with it? It'd been deeper, smokier.
“Well?” Ciel said, and swallowed, a lump of what felt like driftwood pushing awkwardly down his throat.
“My apologies.” Definitely smokier and strangely rough. “I haven't fetched your cloak yet.”
Ciel pulled his brows downward and clicked his tongue. “Then why did you say you had?”
As Sebastian stepped forward, the mellow orange glow spilling down from the chandeliers flowed over his hair like liquid fire and seemed to bounce right off his pale skin. There was no warmth to his appearance, but his mouth was parted in an unusual way that opened his entire face, and his nostrils were flaring in and out, in and out, the minimalist movement just visible. Dark red eyes shone, glowing like embers dying in a fire, softer than Ciel had ever, ever seen them. And when Sebastian blinked, it was with a slowness that made Ciel's heart thump like a grandfather clock‘s pendulum in his chest.
Ciel clenched his fists and continued, “I asked you a ques—”
“I could eat you alive.”
“—tion... What?!” Ciel found his hands creeping around his waist, but he forced them back to his sides as Sebastian took another step, then another. The man's face... it looked like it was crumbling, falling under some grand weight, or—no, not crumbling, but transforming into something new. There was more emotion on Sebastian's features than Ciel had previously seen, and it was odd. Almost human. Something like pleasure. No, purer than that, more childish than that: it was joy or extreme contentedness, or one of the many other emotions that fell under the innocent happiness category. An emotion a demon had no right wearing.
“Oh, my lord. I knew you would look adorable... but.” It didn't sound as though Sebastian was teasing him. The demon was before him now, and after a moment's pause he was leaning down, bending toward Ciel, closer, closer, downdowndown, the tall shadow of him enveloping Ciel entirely. Ciel felt the headband move over his hair, shifting gently, where Sebastian was rubbing his cheek against the left kitten ear. “So soft. So remarkably fine.”
“Er...” It was all Ciel could manage under the unspeakable heaviness of Sebastian's proximity. Wait, this was silly. Sebastian liked cats, that was all, and he'd obviously been caught off-guard. “Get off me,” Ciel said with more authority.
“The ear colour matches your hair perfectly, my lord. They blend right in.” Sebastian drew his fingers through Ciel's hair, letting the tips brush the band and making it slide over Ciel's head.
“You'll mess them up,” Ciel began, but it was clear Sebastian wasn't listening to him any more. Fine, then he would remove Sebastian if Sebastian would not move himself. Ciel wrapped his fingers around Sebastian's arm to push him off, but Sebastian was faster, stronger, and before he knew it, Ciel was rising in the demon's arms. “Oy, put me down! Sebastian!”
The leather was sticking to his back and his front, and it was so tight and close that it was like Sebastian's gloved fingers were really on his skin, a fingertip skidding over one of Ciel's hipbones, a hot palm flat against the base of his spine. Sebastian found the tail that was attached to the back of Ciel's leather shorts, and tugged it gently.
“Mmmm.”
“Se-Sebastian!”
“Cute. Though this isn't as cute as the ears.” Another tug, then Sebastian released the tail. Ciel felt it drop to swing beneath him, back and forth in time with the clock's ticking. Sebastian's face was close to his cheek, so close Ciel felt cool, inky strands of Sebastian's hair brush his chin. A sniff against his ear, faint and steady. A nose tip grazing his neck, travelling down the curve. Sebastian's wicked-hot breath on Ciel's already too-hot skin. The dull squeak of gloves on leather and leather on flesh; Ciel clutched in a firm grip.
The rubbing and constriction teased a deep ache in the pit of Ciel's stomach, pushing and prodding it so that it grew and throbbed in him harder. The sensation reminded Ciel of needing to use the bathroom and accidentally putting pressure on his bladder, but this wasn't quite the same—this felt more dangerous, a more terrible act even than wetting oneself; this felt like the ultimate loss of control. On the rare occasions his sleep wasn't racked with vivid red nightmares, Ciel sometimes woke with a similar feeling twisting his abdomen into exquisite knots and pulsing in his testicles until they felt tight and painful.
“May I keep you?” Sebastian purred against his neck, and Ciel didn't know if the damned demon was joking or if he was deadly serious.
Bunching his fingers in the front of Sebastian's coat, Ciel squirmed and pushed at Sebastian's chest, since talking wasn't doing any good. But that only made the slippery leather kiss him more insistently, made it cling to him down there, and a choked moan struggled up his throat as his fingers got lost in Sebastian's coat.
“That's—enough.” Ciel's head swam. Yanking one hand free, he thumped Sebastian clean in the chest, then a second time. The acute squeeze at his groin was stifling him, wrenching him fast to a place he wasn't ready to go. “That's enough! That's an order!”
Suddenly Ciel was plummeting, dropping in the air, but he didn't hit the floor like he thought he would. Sebastian slowed him at the last moment and gently lowered him until his feet were planted firmly on solid marble, until there was room enough to catch his breath and not feel like he was suffocating in a tangle of leather and demon arms.
“Yes, my lord.” Sebastian stepped back one pace, two. “I'll retrieve your cloak now, and then we can be on our way.”
Ciel nodded, hoping it looked resolute. As he stormed to the large oak front doors, he didn't feel particularly resolute, but the loud clop-clop of his shoes on the marble made him feel a little better.
Within moments, Sebastian was striding back holding Ciel's outdoor cloak, the thick one that would conceal his costume to the world outside. The demon's eyes had lost that glowing, hungry edge, and were now back to their mellow, unreadable red.
“Let's get this over with,” Ciel grumbled, snatching the cloak and wrapping himself in it as tightly as he could regardless of how hot he was. “I want this done.”
“Have no fear, my lord,” Sebastian said, opening the door and ushering Ciel out into the cool night air, “I promise to prepare you a saucer of milk upon our return.”
Ciel's reply was drowned by the heavy clung of the door, and as the grandfather clock tick tocked, tick tocked, a small mewl floated down the stairs from the direction of the servants' quarters.
~Fin~