Disclaimer: I own nothing.
Author's Notes: This is my first time posting on ! I thought it might be easier to use than livejournal. Just be warned that I'm new to this format.
Warnings: Alois's character deserves its own special warning. Take that as you will. :3
- A Mad Tea Party -
I. Quite Contrary
"Show me your scars," Alois often asked, no less than twice an hour while his playmate was held captive under their agreement.
Each time, Ciel would grind his teeth to keep himself from wrapping his hands around the blonde's throat and squeezing until those devious eyes turned back into their sockets.
"Go to Hell," he growled.
"You always say that," the other boy grinned, "when you know that's not where either of us are going."
In the stillness of the Trancy manor's enormous parlor, the wet plunk of four sugar cubes dropped into steaming tea reverberated like a small avalanche. Alois was no student of human character, but he had gathered one important piece of Ciel's psychology thus far: he did not like to talk (save for snide asides) and he was even less likely to do so when it was at someone else's request. Highly uncommon for a nobleman, but then nothing about the Earl Phantomhive was common. He watched the one-eyed child sip at his Earl Grey and stifled an amused chuckle at the contempt that spoiled the raven boy's face. Yes, Alois had no patience for study or schoolwork, but his weekly rendezvous were steadily becoming more like scientific experiments, with Ciel as the test subject. They were little tests, little whispered questions in the dark. If I bend you, will you break?
The test subject folded his dainty hands on the dark tablecloth, and the scientist wondered if his bones were made of spun sugar or bronze. What does your blood smell like—candy or gunmetal?
"What are you staring at?" He hissed.
"Show me," Alois's smile widened, "and I'll let you leave early."
"No." The coldest of London winters were no match for the ice in his voice.
"What are you so afraid of?" He leaned across the table, folding his legs beneath him like an unmannered schoolboy. "Do you not like people to see you without all your clothes on?"
Oh, he'd hit on something there. A fire blazed behind his study's cheeks. "Don't be ridiculous," he almost (almost) stammered.
Alois outright laughed. "I don't care, Ciel, I don't. I won't judge your body. Look, look, I'll show you mine!" White fingers popped open pearly buttons.
"Stop it!"
He got so huffy when things weren't going his way, Alois noted. The world didn't turn unless Earl Phantomhive demanded it to, and here was a frivolous brat who laughed at his commands.
"No?" His hands paused, having only undone the top three buttons of his blouse. In one semi-fluid movement he perched himself on the table, poised like a little jungle cat with a Cheshire smile. Ciel looked less like terrified prey and more like an irritated audience. "Maybe you want to finish the rest."
He tumbled across the table, forsaking irreplaceable china and delicate silk, and fell, not ungracefully, into Ciel's lap, giggling and snarling in play. Ciel is Little Red Riding Hood, he thought, forcing the smaller boy against the armchair's velvet back, and I am the Wolf! It was a game Alois sometimes forced upon his servants when one too many pieces of cake awoke a childish and rambunctious pixie inside of him.
None of them ever fought back the way Ciel did.
"Get off!" Little nails scratched at his bare throat and face, aiming for his eyes. When that proved futile he reached for his hair, yanking blonde tufts while beating elbows against his shoulders and twisting beneath the taller boy's frame. Alois felt a knobby knee jam hard against his lower back and grabbed the offendant's dark locks in turn.
They fought this way for several minutes, Little Red trapped below the Wolf but biting, scratching, and tearing viciously at whatever scrap of skin he could claim. After those few minutes, they'd worn each other down to heaving scraps. Alois, in truth, still had enough fight left in him, but Ciel's ugly-sounding gasps for breath had signaled him to stop.
"Ciel?" He leaned back, puzzled by the boy's ragged panting. "Ciel, are you okay?" Now he was coughing, or hacking, by the sound of it, and his cheeks were all purple and it looked like he was drowning and oh no what if he'd really hurt him?
"Ciel, I'm sorry! What's wrong? Should I get someone?" He looked frantically back and forth while his playmate made terrible, choking, verge-of-death sounds. "Ciel! Did you say something?"
"I'm fine!" He forced out a shout with one last gulp of breath. "Get… away from… me!"
Oh good! He was all better—like nothing bad had ever happened. A cloudless smile reappeared on Alois's twisted face. "We're playing. I'm the wolf and you're the maiden!"
"Like Hell… am I… the maiden," he panted, but his hands were pinned above his head and the wolf was showing him all his pretty white teeth.
He would have fought back, but the asthma ravaging his lungs told him there'd be a bigger price to pay if he struggled (however, if Alois overstepped his boundaries he would get his retribution, illness be damned).
"I can see your scars," he giggled, pointing at the red lines etched in his neck. "Right here… and here…"
"You put those there, idiot." He gasped louder than he'd meant to, his breath still shaken. Alois chose to ignore it.
"Why don't you want me to see? You think I don't know?" He stuck out his branded tongue and traced the black string of his eye patch. "… Unclean."
"Shut up." Ciel almost had his breath back now.
"We have to pretend, I know. We have to pretend for everyone. But you don't have to pretend here." He licked the shell of his ear, just like he had before. For some reason the strangeness of the act fascinated him.
"I never pretend, you vile brat." He would grind his teeth to dust by the time Alois had finished with him. The evil faun was letting his lips dance lightly against his throat, playing as though to kiss him but never coming quite close enough. "How much longer?"
"An hour." His tongue touched his neck experimentally, seething like fire and ice against warm skin.
"You didn't check," The test subject growled.
"Forever." He licked his neck again, pretending that this time he was a curious kitten and trying out a meow just because he knew it would annoy Ciel to itty-bitty pieces. "Forever and ever mine and always! Pretty Little Red and Goldilocks. We'll kill all the wolves and bears. Won't that be fun?"
"The clock says fifteen minutes Alois. Fifteen minutes so you'd better—"
"Why do you always want to go?" He whimpered. "Always want to leave me alone here. I have no one to play with. Claude is terrible at games. I would get you anything you want, I have lots of money too you know…"
It was an act Ciel was always forced to endure—the final scene of their Tuesday play dates. Alois was always left in a puddle on the floor, promising so many wonderful things if he just stayed for one more hour, or one more day, or one more lifetime.
"I would rather give Sebastian my soul now than spend another minute with you," he swore.
"You're so mean to me!" Fake tears shimmered in poisonous eyes. "You said I have fifteen minutes left!"
"And you do, so get it over with!" Patience was a virtue, and Ciel had no time for those.
Like a rekindled flame, Alois's smile burned again. As his servants knew well, their master's emotions could be lit as quickly as they could be extinguished.
"You're trying to hide from me." Now the smile was insidious: a pretty bow atop a horrid wreckage. "We're not playing hide and seek today." Small hands perused his coat. "I want to touch you, Ciel."
"I will kill you," Ciel tried to calmly state. "You swore, and if you break the agreement, I will—"
"Blah blah blah I know. I swore I wouldn't do a bunch of stuff and you'll kill me if I do. You've said it a thousand times." He tapped coat buttons. "Maybe if you were nicer to me I wouldn't think about what I want to do to you so much."
"Twelve minutes left, Alois, and if you don't shut up…"
"I can say what I want! That's not breaking the agreement. I can say whatever I want," he protested.
No matter how hard Ciel rolled his eyes, he knew he was right.
"Well I don't have to listen," his trapped audience retorted.
"Well I don't give a damn," Alois sang.
"Fine. Say what you like. You have eleven minutes left. But if your tongue touches me again I'll rip it off. By the way, that made our next meeting an hour shorter."
"But—"
"Our agreement."
"Fine." There was mutual pouting. Disappointment soon faded when Alois remembered his current position; Ciel glared at the corridor, counting down the seconds in his mind.
"Claude says I make you uncomfortable. Squirmy," He whispered in his play thing's ear. "He says it makes you not want to play with me but I don't care. I like it when you squirm, Ciel. You look so precious when you're pissed at me."
Ciel was looking rather "precious" as the seconds chipped off in his thoughts. 22… 23…
"I can tell when you're uncomfortable. Your cheeks turn all red, like strawberries, and your face gets all twisty. I think you even get scared…"
"Thirty-five, thirty-six, thirty-seven…"
"I think you do! You get scared. You act like you're so much bigger than me but I could take you if I wanted to, just like they did." He leaned back a little to see his test subject's red face and chuckled like they'd just shared an inside joke.
"I want to touch you, Ciel," he said again, though with less hesitance. "I want to make you feel so good."
Palms and fingers threatened his clothing, hovering over the fabric like the hands of a magician waiting to reveal his surprise. Pull up the curtain and look! He's disappeared!
"Am I making you uncomfortable? I'm not touching you." He waved his hands in the air as evidence. "Well, I'm still in your chair, but this is playing so it's not against our agreement, is it?"
Our agreement, he said, as though Ciel could do little more than assure that he wouldn't be brutalized or murdered in their lopsided contract. "No," He conceded.
"Someday," the wolf smiled wider, "You'll want me to touch you. And it won't be like when they touched you,"—a wince from his subject—"It will be so nice. So nice, Ciel. Ciel, please!" He gave a fake cry, biting his lower lip in a visage of agony and want.
Ciel didn't know how much longer he could withstand vomiting.
"I can't stand being this close to you!" With the melodramatic flair of an amateur Shakespearean actor, Alois flung himself against the table, arching his back and striking a variety of poses because frankly it was a lot of fun rolling around in inappropriate places. "It makes me hurt. You're so terrible Ciel, just terrible! Why are you doing this to me?"
The cobwebs in the upper right-hand corner of the ceiling were not quite distracting enough for Ciel to completely ignore the attention-seeking pretty boy dancing in front of him like something out of a lewd penny dreadful. Giggling when he noticed his captive viewer's evasive stare, the actor drew himself up to sit on pink tinged knees, tablecloth crinkling against his boots.
"Do you hate it when I'm close to you, Ciel? Do you hate it when I talk about touching you?" He cocked his head. "Tell me what you hate! Tell me what makes you so mad… You always look mad, anyway."
Nothing but a heavily furrowed brow in response.
"Claude is outside the door, you know," he whispered excitedly. "He can hear us. Wonder what he'd think if he started hearing strange noises. Wonder if he'd come inside to check."
One eyebrow was now curiously raised, though the eye beneath still glared intently at the dusty webs.
"Oh, Ciel!" Alois turned toward the door and moaned. "More, more!" He crooned with a jovial smile, eyes closed in faux ecstasy, hands caressing his face and neck and travelling beneath his slightly opened shirt.
"Five minutes left," his victim more than growled.
It was so easy to ignore time, to tip his head back and whimper, to roll his hips, to glare down with lying, lustful looks and cry "Ciel!" until he knew he'd driven him to the edge. The only issue lay in his darting eye.
"Oh!" he gasped. "Look at me, Ciel."
His subject refused to comply.
"Look at me!" he shouted, teeth bared.
"Look at how you make me feel," he said once he knew he had his full attention, as that bluest eye was no longer boring a hole into the ceiling.
Eyes shut and lips perked, he gave a lascivious but convincing mewl, then glanced to see his object's reply with a look of temptation so practiced he could have successfully proffered Eve the forbidden fruit.
"What?" the Earl snapped. "What do you want me to say? I don't care to play your stupid games, Alois. You don't impress me."
"Impress you?" Alois scoffed. "I don't want to impress you, Ciel. I want to fuck you."
If I bend you…
"You don't even know what you're saying." The angrier Ciel got, the more he seemed like a snarling little pup rearing to attack a teasing kitty.
"Do too!" his torturer exclaimed before returning to his moaning routine, now encouraged by escalating rage. "This is your fault, you know. If you'd just let me touch you a little then maybe I wouldn't think about, about throwing you against the table and, and…"
It was now rather obvious that the foolish child had no idea what he was talking about, so he settled for making kittenish squeals and groans while his witness looked on in disgust. Oh, he was making him so mad. His cheeks were getting red, bright red, like two plump, bleeding strawberries. But there was, unbeknownst to the raucous actor, a hint of complacency in his disapproving gleam.
"Where did you learn to put on a show like this, Alois?" said Ciel. "You make a very convincing whore."
Something flashed in those two periwinkle eyes, but it left in a rush. Alois bit his wrist and moaned a bit louder, unsure if his butler could hear him from the hallway.
"You're no better than a twopence tramp. You're beneath me," Ciel snipped with an expecting leer.
"Shut up!" The prostrate actor snapped out of character.
"You disgust me, Alois Trancy. You're a whiny little slut. I don't care if we both have contracts…" he seethed, "we are nothing alike."
An airborne teacup smashed against the wall, shattering into a flurry of sharp, porcelain fragments. Its destroyer panted on the table.
"Bastard!" he shrieked. "You, you shut up!"
"You're a fraud. You're a stupid child and I have no use for you."
Upon Ciel's dark head an invisible crown rested once more. Small limbs and pale, clawed hands adorned the arms of his thrown. Before him, the jester contorted and wailed.
"Stop talking!" Alois's fingers searched for something else to throw, but the remainder of his tea set was already lying broken on the rug.
"Stop pretending, Trancy. Stop pretending that I can't see exactly what you are. You can pretend to everyone else but you can't pretend to me."
Alois's tears were real this time. Ciel could tell by the way they fell sloppily down his face and descended past his shuddering mouth. Reality was an unsightly beast, but he preferred this imperfect, fractured boy to the sickly sweet lie that he usually portrayed.
"No!" Alois wrung the tablecloth the same way he wished at that moment he could wring the other boy's neck, choking him until he took it back. Unsay it! "Shut up, Ciel! Shut your fucking mouth!"
"Such disgusting language for a member of society. More evidence that you will never be my equal," he spoke with the precision of a striking snake.
Blood coursing with equal parts venom and desperation, the Earl Trancy sprang from the tea table and shoved it away like an unwanted toy, though the heavy wood only budged a few inches. He placed his shaking hands on the arms of the lordly boy's chair and bent over him until his blonde fringe touched the other's blue.
"If you don't shut your mouth right now, Ciel, if you don't shut it I'll—"
"You'll what? You can't touch me. You'll never be able to touch me," he glared fiercely back. "You'll never be able to look me in the eye because I am better than you, Alois. You are weak, and you are nothing."
"Shut up!" Big, wet, real tears streaked down his cheeks; his voice trembled with sobs. "You can't… say that… to me!"
He fell to his knees and pressed his forehead against the revolted boy's calves—wrapped his arms around his little legs as though he were clinging for his life, as though the parlor was the sea and Ciel was all that was left of his boat.
"It's… not t-true, Ciel! I… I'm j-just like you, a-and you're just like me…"
Ciel winced when he felt cold tears trickle down his leg.
"Our time is up. Get off," he demanded in a chipped tone.
"No, wait! That's not fair!" Alois wiped his wet lashes with the back of his hand.
"Let go of me." The glare should have been warning enough, but Alois was just as stubborn.
"No! You can yell at me all you want, Ciel, but one day I'll have you and you won't get to say mean things to me and we'll see who's beneath who then!" His expression of despair was now wholly replaced with one of defiant wrath.
Ciel folded his arms and huffed.
"Sebastian!" he summoned.
"Yes, my lord?"
"Why haven't you gotten me yet?" he asked impatiently.
"You seemed preoccupied, master. I was simply waiting for your call," the demon smiled (or smirked).
"Well, I'd like to leave now, if you wouldn't mind doing your job and escorting me out," he testily requested.
Alois was deaf to their conversation, having pressed his entire self against Ciel's thin legs in a posture of obstinate refusal to budge an inch. He can't leave, he thought, because I won't let go.
"Get off, Trancy!" Ciel tried to escape the boy's bear trap arms. "Sebastian, get him off!"
"Yes, my lord."
The clinging blonde felt gloved hands gently snatch his collar and attempt to pull him away. Alois erupted in a scream.
"Claude!" he shrilled as though Sebastian had put a gun to his back rather than a hand. "Claude, help me!"
As though called by a spell, his bespectacled butler seemingly manifested by his side. Yellow eyes turned bitter when he saw his rival's hand clinched around his master's collar.
"May I ask why you have laid your hands upon my master?"
Sebastian let go of the boy's shirt and turned to the butler with upturned palms and an apologetic grin. "I was merely following my master's request that he be permitted to leave, seeing as their meeting has surpassed their standard time limit."
"I don't want it!" the sniffling child barked his most common phrase. "Make him stay, Claude! I order you!"
"Get him off, Sebastian!" Ciel looked thoroughly irritated and one step away from furious.
Sebastian offered Claude a look that said "your turn", and stood watchfully behind his master like a chess player who was interested to observe, and perhaps mock, his opponent's move. Death grip continued, with the victim staring daggers at the pale, shaking vines that ensnared him with adamant passion and the yellow head that rested against his legs. The demon nodded his head, then knelt beside the fickle boy who refused to let go of what happened to be the one toy in the entire store that wasn't currently for sale.
"Master," he murmured, placing a hand gently upon his shoulder. "It is their time to leave."
"No!" Alois jerked away, but his butler's hand remained.
The smooth faced demon, just as frighteningly perfect as the monster that currently towered over him, whispered low and close into his young master's ear, moving cautiously to place his other hand on his waist as he spoke what must have been either extremely comforting words or a powerful incantation, as the boy finally released his grip and fastened himself instead to his butler's front, with arms now wrapped around a neck and legs around his middle.
"My master thanks you for your presence. You are permitted to leave at your own discretion." With a regal half-bow, he turned a full semi-circle and made for the grand staircase.
It would be highly uncouth of Alois, considering the image he had made for himself, were he to deny Ciel of a bitter, maniacal look over his carrier's shoulder. And it simply wouldn't do if Ciel neglected to offer a contemptuous huff in reply.
He ordered Sebastian to slam the door behind them.
Alois was singing.
"Mary, Mary, quite contrary…"
Two days until Ciel was at his doorstep again.
"How does your garden grow?"
Dressed in his starry night blue coat with the silver buttons, silver buttons, silver—
"—bells and cockle shells."
Ready to play their hide-and-seek games. Run-and-catch, run-and-catch, run-and catch.
"And pretty maids all in a row!"
Alois dragged his nails down his butler's neck.
"This time we'll have cake! Lots of cake!"