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Ciel was not afraid.
He is not afraid. And by this, he means that he isn’t afraid of Sebastian, or anything that comes his way from Sebastian. Sebastian wouldn’t leave his side no matter what he did or does, he knows that the demon can’t harm him. That was against the contract.
But apparently, he can harm Sebastian.
“The tenfold clause, Sebastian. Does it extend to all sensation caused by the contract-holder, or only pain?”
“All sensation, my lord.”
Ciel lays beside his butler, running his young and small tongue along the front of his teeth and inner cheeks. Still hot. Bittersweet with tea. His eyes stared tiredly at Sebastian’s pale neck, constricting with jagged breath. Only breathing because his master told him to. His eyes are shut tight, the young earl notes. Whether it was from gratification from the gentle pleasure he was giving, or pure anxiety, he wasn’t sure.
His hands run along the his servant’s head, stroking back black silken hair as if he was soothing a frightened child. But, in a way, Sebastian was a child now. Yet he was a crutch.
This is when Ciel mustn’t think of his immortal servant as something… mortal. Sebastian is not a replacement for his parents. He isn’t a friend. He isn’t a dog. Sebastian is a demon, and he has been on this wretched earth far longer than the boy. This demon, in a human suit, was not of this world. He knew things beyond Ciel’s capacity or fathom, and has seen parts of this world and the next that will never even grace his mind.
From the very start of their contract, Ciel was afraid. He was afraid of many things. Wandering through the manor, hoping the red-eyed specimen won’t find him; praying to a God he barely believed in to save him from this living Hell. What if the man that looked so alike to his late father, get tired of him? Would he take his soul, and go on his way, laughing? A being that can live forever, consuming human souls, would surely be above Ciel. Sebastian was invincible. Or so he thought.
But, as of today, three years later from that time, he discovers that Sebastian has a heart, too. He has changed dramatically in a mere week. And Ciel can understand. For he, too, is not the same person three years ago.
“Sebastian?” his voice breaks the blessed silence; it shatters into a million pieces, giving way to conversations that neither of them wanted to tread on.
Sebastian’s body goes rigid, and Ciel can feel it through his fingers and see it through the morning’s light. A beautiful, broken man, this specimen laying beside him was.
The butler says silent, but peeks open his left eye, confirming the boy that he was listening. The butler did not want to talk. In fact, he didn’t really want to do anything. He was crumbling into nothing under the sheer weight of anticipation from this child. Sebastian is changing.
“How… are you, at the moment?” Ciel asks, his eyes watching the tiny, microscopic, movements the other male was making. His eyepatch was askew, barely hanging on. Just by a hair. His contracted eye was glowing softly, and Sebastian’s heart muscles tightened.
Sebastian doesn’t speak at first, but he takes in a unneeded breath. The act, surprisingly, comforts to the boy.
“I ask of you to aught dote on it, milord. I am but a mere serv-”
“Sebastian,” The boy’s voice breaks through the demon’s cracked speak.
Sebastian’s adam’s apple bobs as he swallows. A strand of hair is moved out of his face by young, graceful fingers. Fit to play the piano. Fit to sink into knife wounds. Fit to be coated in crimson.
“I would like to get dressed now. After a bath. I reak,” is what his young lord says, as he shifts to sit up. From laying next to him and so close, Sebastian can see Ciel’s muscles strain from the small mundane act. From a human’s outlook, the boy couldn’t pick up a basket full of potatoes.
But to Sebastian, his little lord held the power of tenfold the power of Rome. Tenfold the power of determination to survive of the Israelites.
Tenfold pain... Ciel knew of this. It had be discussed. But what has he done with it? Nothing. He thinks by putting Sebastian back into a routine, their routine, will help. Ordering the demon to call him professionally, and not by name.
“If you give me an order, Ciel, I will be compelled by the contract to fulfill it-”
“Don’t call me Ciel.” the boy snaps back.
And his sharp tone hangs in the air for a moment.
“That’s not… that’s not who you are, Sebastian. It doesn’t feel right.”
Ciel doesn’t want to be called by his name. That’s not who he is anymore.
That fact was breaking Sebastian into little pieces.
“Very well, milord,” Sebastian says. Ciel looks up at his butler, now standing at the foot of the bed. The butler stands, but his movements are dull, heavy, and graceless. It is like a tiger, prowling with 306 kg of wight.
Sebastian walks over to his young master, passing him with the most stoic of expressions one can imagine. More than stoic. It’s forced.
Like any other morning, they begin their routine.
“Schedule?” Ciel asks, as his butler strips him down. The tub has been filled with hot water, topped with cold to make it just right. Just how Ciel likes it. Not too cold; for he could get a cold with his poor health. Not to hot; for it would burn his pale, baby-vulnerable skin.
“Document check. And a meeting with Madam Hoist for your sweet shop that will be opening on Bethnal Green,”
Ciel nods, and slips into the tub. It is the same as always. Not to hot, and not too cold. He sighs, the steam drifting softly around him makes him pink with blush. Sebastian pulls of his coat, rolls up his sleeves, and sits on his heels to bath his master down. Like always…
…
A week later, Ciel suddenly remembers the first night he returned home. Carried in this butler clad in black; away from the blood and burning flesh.
He was very afraid then. He remembers vividly how the man set him down on a crumbled bench, and he put the boy’s home together from ash, old blue prints, and flashes of memory from his shock-frozen mind.
It was like magic, and the poor broken thing that was the demon’s new master couldn’t handle it all. The way he home looked perfect. Too perfect. It was as if his home never burned away to begin with…
But the month he spent as a slave, a toy to play for old men who claim to be doing God’s work… he knows better. He knows the horrors of man, the secrets his late father hid from him. Bloodied, and stained with other fluids he’d rather not dote on.
Humans.
He once thought he could never find a stranger, and all was good and jolly. Like he was raised to believe. Now his only crutch is a devil. Red-eyed and clad in black.
He remembers shaking, screaming, and fighting his way to live those first few months spend with Sebastian; the demon who he names after his late dog.
Even when the man tells him countless times, over and over again, that he would never hurt him the way those humans did… Ciel had to fix himself. If not, he had to build a wall so tall and so strong that not even he could penetrate. And that’s exactly what he did.
Those walls kept him sane. Pride and power became his best friends. Sebastian was one of those walls, too. His crutch.
And now look at them. One broken and barely alive, moving through his duties like a slave in captivity. Desperately trying to prepare himself for the inevitable. His master was singular. That much he knew. But he has seen Ciel kill and fight and lust for power and revenge.
Who says he wouldn’t use the unspoken clause of the contract?
And look at Ciel; wide eyed and worried. Not afraid of Sebastian or the power he discovered that he had all along. But rather, he is afraid for Sebastian.
Ciel changed all those years ago. He is not the same. He is not a helpless little boy who needs coddling.
But now who is he?
“Sebastian,” he calls from his study, his eyes to the ground, dark and restless. Dull and dead. Bags proof of nights spent trying to build his walls higher: only to fall into darker pits.
“Milord,” Sebastian answers, his voice even duller; and tasteless.
Ciel sits on the chair that’s lined with purple velvet, stuffed with goose feathers and cotton. The chair is too tall and too big for the boy; his legs dangle off the edge.
“I’m done,” Ciel says. His eyes are hard, staring the demon down as if he was challenging him to protest. The whites of his eyes red.
Sebastian knew what was being conversed. He goes through the loopholes. Despite knowing nothing goes past his cruel little lord.
“Pardon?”
“Don’t play dumb with me, Sebastian,”
“You must speak clearly, milord: it is unbecoming for a noble of high status such as yourself,” Ciel’s teeth grits, and he sees his butler flinch. Anxiety and madness threatening to surface. He forces himself to calm. Not for his sake, but for Sebastian’s too.
“You are suspended for a week,” Ciel says. The sentence was said as if he had been planning this for sometime. His hands clasp together. Sebastian’s left eye twitches.
“A week?” he echos. His voice is drone.
“You are incapable of completing tasks in this state of mind. I am expecting a letter from the Queen nowadays. How am I supposed to rely on you if you can’t rely on yourself?”
Sebastian’s breath stops. He studies the child at the desk: Ciel looks like a child playing dress up in his father’s clothes.
“And if you get a letter from Her Majesty before my week?”
“I shall call you back,”
Sebastian doesn’t move. The tension between them is suffocating. Even for the butler. It was thick and sticky, making a castle out of cards between them. One wrong move would collapse everything. Everything.
“You are now free to do whatever you’d like for the next seven days if without delay. It must still be in the rules of our contract, but I do not expect to see you do any work or tasks. I will ask the servants to see if you follow my orders if you spend that time at the manor,”
“You rather me do nothing than try to compose myself?” Sebastian asks. His voice now is bitter, blaming, and anxiety is rippling on the surface. His throat is tight.
“Is doing tedious mundane tasks composing?” Ciel snaps.
“I was unaware, young master, that aiding in your vicinity was tedious.”
“I would have noticed you returning to normal if it helped,”
“Maybe it is. You’re not the type of person to loom over another’s back,”
“Are you trying to disobey me?” Ciel whines out, annoyed and shaking. His chest is tight, and his throat closes up. His speak is forced and weak, threatening to break. Now it is chipping. His butler’s voice, to, is rising quickly, and he wonders if this is the best way to approach this. Maybe there is no right way to approach this.
When he first discovered the mental torture Sebastian was suffering from this, for a whole week prior till today, he believed that using a gentle hand to guide him through their usual routine would fix him. Back to normal ol’ Sebastian! It seems it just twisted the knife.
Sebastian’s eyes are darker, his hair is wild and tangled. Back is slouched slightly, fingers dripped into fists.
They were little things at first: things only Ciel noticed. But lately even the servants are talking.
“No,” Sebastian says, voice suddenly strained. His breath stops, and he is on the verge of collapsing.
No. Sebastian has already collapsed.
“Sebastian. Come here,” he says. His main crutch: one unfeeling and invincible, now crumbled to a mad man on the edge of crazy.
Sebastian is frozen in his spot, eyes wide. He thinks the pain will finally come. His master’s true colors will come out.
The butler walks with shaking legs, eyes to the ground. Ciel turns his chair around, facing his butler.
He is not the child he was three years ago. But he is not the man he was a month ago.
What is he?
What are they?
“Sit, Sebastian,” he instructs, and the man falls to his knees quicker than Pompeii.
Ciel reaches out to his butler’s face, touching the inhumanly soft skin there. Sebastian makes a loud sigh, dropping his head in defeat. He was pathetic. But, then again, Ciel was too.
Ciel falls out of his chair with a thud as loud as the other, opening his arms out to the demon. Sebastian lifts his eyes up, blank with anticipation, fear, and rage.
And Sebastian gets the point.
They embrace the other like lovers separated for years. Clutching the other so tightly, it was as if they let go, they would fly away. Far, far away…
Ciel, for the first time since he was afraid of Sebastian, crys. His throat chokes out in a sob like broken dishes. Shards of those dishes have been pushed under his skin and bone, pressed into his chest and lungs. All the way up to his throat. Enough pain to cause tears to fall, and acid to run down his mouth.
Sebastian, too, crys. But he is silent compared to the unraveling mess that was and always will be his master. He does not need to cry like a human. So he cries like a demon. Tendrils of black ink swirl close by, feathers falling to the ground; forgotten and soon to be lost. His chest tightens, holding back a sob as his little lord buries his fingers into his black silken hair, pulling gently.
Sebastian and Ciel’s crutch to sanity and absolution was each other. And look at them now! Both beaten to a pulp by mear emotions. Weakness and anticipation of what is to come. Of what might not come at all. They have been together for three years. Such time should be smaller than a grain of sand to Sebastian, but it felt like a millenia. The silly tasks he did for this master, and feats he committed to save and serve him.
Since he became something on this earth, he was nothing. Parents and friends were nothing. A home was nothing. A life? Nothing. He and many others like him had to build a image for themselves, a likable persona to lewer and seduce in pray. Experience made him who he was: but, the unavoidable shadow of living for eternity was… torture. Living beyond humans, watching them birth, grow, reproduce, and die. And the cycle kept going and going and going… Demons can’t have that. And to witness this for eternity? An image was all they really owned.
Pain was something they can’t experience: so says the humans. But he experiences it every day. Every waking moment. He is made of pain, it is his philosophy. But humans can not understand it. It isn’t physical or emotional, but… mental. Spiritual. Tenfold that pain would bring anyone, much less a demon, to their knees.
And Ciel. Ciel, his young little lord has done that… by doing the very opposite. Nothing.
LIke a child that had to be lured to stay in place with sticky sweet words, forced to relaxed, as the doctor prepares to give them a shot. The child always believes the pain to be greater than it really is. So, when given the absolution that his master can cause him the greatest of all pains, how else was he to act?
But here he sits, wrapped in each other’s arms like they will never let go: one crying onto a small shoulder, silent as the dead, strands of darkness running down his face. The other presses his face into a shivering chest much larger than his own, crying and screaming and wailing for his lost home, his lost parents, his lost dog… his lost companion.
Sebastian broke with the unpreparable pain he should have experienced. And Ciel broke because Sebastian wasn’t strong enough to hold both of them up.
Ciel is not the same. And he will never be the same. He is not a child, and he will not apologize for his actions. But he is not a man, and he will not ignore the unavoidable.
His cries must have echoes throughout the mansion, for the servants had barged in. Witnessing the crying, heaving mess tangled on the floor by the desk. The two strongest people they know, shattered onto the carpet. Enough to make them cry, too. Enough to drive confusion out, forcing suppressed pains and feelings to arise. LIke this, it causes the change.
Nothing will be the same after this.
Nothing.
….