December 31st, 1898.
They say it's the city of love.
Illuminated by the moon, Paris was alive with romanticism. The city was charming, even in the winter. Especially in the affluent neighbourhoods, where snow fell like dusted sugar over the pretty lamp-lit streets. Cobblestone glimmered under the stars. Violins flirted with every street corner. Abundant roses grew at each residence. Restaurants and shops lit up in a thousands lights stayed open late for the most important night of the year.
Celebrating patrons trickled out of bars by the dozen, draped in furs and laughter on their champagne scented tongues. Crystal glasses clinked in unison. Excitement sparked in each Parisian's heart as the new year drew closer, bated breath over fine wine. Diamonds caught on brass light fixtures. Lovers gazed across candlelit tables, stared out over the city with silken gloves entwined. Romance was not dead, but dancing.
And if it was true what they said of Paris, then the red-light district was the heart of the city of love. The sleepy labyrinthine streets of the antre du démon only woke when the sun came down. Then the bars would open, the drunks would follow. The cacophony of ungraceful house bands echoed down the crooked streets.
The whores came out too. They wrapped themselves in tight, tacky fabric - corsets cinching in their waists and forcing their breasts to push up through their blouses. The ladies of the night pinched their cheeks to look the image of health, painted their lips with perfumed paint to mask the cheap liquor on their teeth, until their mouths were dark and wet with sweet promises. Prostitution was a profitable, and legal business - if you were young, beautiful and willing.
On the outskirts of the infamous district was another neighbourhood. The slum was so close that the excitement from the bars echoed out over the night and in through the doorways of the dilapidated buildings. They held together with clothes lines and sheer luck. The little community was poor - bakers and workers who woke at the rise of dawn to toil. None were awake on new year's eve, with no luxury for pleasure… except for one.
Ciel Phantomhive lived in a two-storey apartment next door to the funeral home. On a still day the smell of formaldehyde was forgivable - but the coffins stacked next door were an eyesore. The lower half of the building was a store room, leaving a habitable second floor for the eighteen year old whore. The apartment was hugged in ivy, roof sunken from heavy snow. It's prettiest feature was the big, crooked window that faced the square.
Snowflakes landed on the bare toes of the boy, perched on the fat ledge of the window sill. He didn't flinch at the cold, too immersed in the yellowed pages of the book that lay open in the palm of his hand. His hair brushed the tops of his collarbones as a bitter breeze whispered by. He tucked back his long hair, his single eye not missing a beat as he continued to read in dull lamplight. He ashed his cigarette against the wall and it fell down like snowflakes. From this high he could see the Eiffel Tower if he lifted his chin - but instead he turned the page of his novel.
In his peripheral, Ciel became aware of two men entering the square outside. Their footprints trailed behind them in the virgin snow. The teenager sighed, lifting his eye from the words and narrowing it at the strangers. He closed his book around his finger and crushed his cigarette into the window ledge. He dropped it's body to the snow below and pointed his chin at the two men.
"Bonsoir," he called. He kicked at the loose ivy and caught it between his toes. One of the men had a charming smile, but the other looked dismayed. Neither were ugly.
"We heard you might be able to show us a good time?" Called up the charming one. His voice echoed over the empty square and Ciel clicked his teeth.
"It's New Year's Eve," he said, like he was actually considering turning them down. The angry one slapped his friend's arm and growled something beneath his breath. I told you so. Charming withdrew something from his expensive-looking fur coat, finger held up at Ciel to bate his argument. In one hand he produced a half-finished bottle of top shelf whiskey. In the other was a leather pouch that chimed with coins when he shook it back and forth.
"We want to celebrate," he declared. His smile was outrageously handsome, and Ciel huffed at him. He opened his book and dog-eared the page to keep his place.
…
Ciel gasped as his back hit the wall.
Charming's mouth pressed into his ear, wet with whiskey. He smelt as rich as he looked, cologne on his collar. His wedding ring was cold on the boy's side, hands untucking his shirt and pushing it further up his stomach. Ciel's fingers curled into the back of the man's dark hair, his head back and under arrest to the hungry kisses sucked onto his throat. From over Charming's shoulder, he could see Angry - arms crossed and simmering as the two danced without him.
"What's wrong with your friend?" Ciel murmured, eye unfocused as his shirt came off his body and he was lifted, his legs wrapping around Charming's taller body. The older man cast a look at his friend, Ciel pressed to the wall - vest buttons leaving indents in the young thing's flesh.
"Don't you want to try him?" Charming's mouth turned down at his friend. He grabbed Ciel's thighs, squeezed roughly before plucking him from the wall. He carried him to Ciel's bed, unkempt pale linen already crumpled before being thrown down onto the thin mattress. His teeth clacked when he fell, a surprised gasp before Charming was kneeling over him. His fancy vest came apart with a few twists of his fingers. Flick. Flick. His shirt too, falling off his shoulders with a roll of his arms - landing betwixt the bedsheets of the same colour.
Ciel's stomach twisted as Charming unbuttoned his trousers. The sound of his zip made the hairs on his arms raise, goosebumps kissed his lily skin. Angry watched from the door. He hadn't moved the entire time. His face was hot with anger, and something else.
"Are you just going to watch?" Charming grinned, not taking his eyes off of Ciel. He tugged the boy's trousers down his skinny hips, whistled low at how the teenager's body looked in the dim light of his apartment. He left them wound around his thighs like a half unwrapped Christmas present. Ciel's fingers twitched by his head, his hair still fanned out across the bedding in the same position as when he fell. His blush extended from his cheeks to his breast. Charming followed it with his fingers, then his tongue.
"It's New Year's Eve," Angry said. He had a foreign accent that Ciel couldn't place. His perpetually upset eyebrows knitted as he watched his friend touch the side of Ciel's face. His thumb dragged over the fat swell of his lower lip and pushed into his mouth. Ciel bit him.
"Cute," Charming muttered, eyes narrowed with bemusement. He leaned in closer and pushed his thumb past the trap of Ciel's teeth and his pupils widened when Ciel's tongue laved over the digit. Ciel hollowed his cheeks, half-closed his eye in the way he knew men liked. His hands didn't move from beside his head - wrists up and vulnerable like a sacrifice before the two, expensive men. An offer.
"Diederich, don't you want to - what's your name again baby?" His thumb was pinning Ciel's tongue down and the boy scowled at him.
"Ciel," he slurred. Charming grinned.
"Don't you want to put something in Ciel's mouth?" Diederich snorted, staring at the wall. Ciel jerked his chin up and Charming's thumb slid wet over his jaw.
"I charge double for two," Ciel warned. He fidgeted with the sheets beneath his hands, chest rising and falling. Charming raised an eyebrow, his cheeks a little red from the whiskey. He leaned in closer and Ciel could see a little spot under one of his eyes. A strand of dark hair fell from behind his ear as he cocked his head and grinned.
"You can count," he breathed - in faux surprise. "A whore that knows maths - not just a pretty face then?" Ciel's pride bled through his cheeks. He held his tongue, the leather pouch of francs on the line. He swallowed his self-respect past the lump in his throat. His lip curled involuntarily.
"I can count," he repeated back, slowly. Charming grinned. Diederich was closer, staring down at him now. Ciel looked up at him, chewed his bottom lip into his mouth and his frown softened. He opened his mouth like he might say something but Charming beat him to it. Ciel watched the tension return to the angry man's brow as Charming forced him up the mattress. His hair and fingers dragged along the rough, cheap bedding.
"What else can you do?" Charming asked, tongue thick with silver. Ciel arched his back off the bed and pressed his thighs closer together.
"I'll do anything for money," he promised. He dipped his fingers into his clavicle and brushed his hair off the lily skin. Charming followed his touch, pupils black and focused. He made a sound in his throat. Diederich shifted his feet. The way the angry man stared down at him made the boy's skin start to prick.
"Good puppy," Charming smiled, one hand on Ciel's naked leg and the other on his unbuttoned trousers. He gave Ciel a little pat and crawled over him until his strong legs were dipping the mattress on both sides of the boy's head. The teenager grabbed his legs, the material like silk under his palms. It smelt like wealth, Charming smelt heady when he tugged Ciel back by the hair and forced his mouth back open with his thumb.
"Open up," he murmured. Ciel obeyed languidly, eye heavy with intoxication. He tugged the front of his trousers open, Ciel staring up at the ceiling with his fringe in Charming's grasp.
"And make it quick," Charming added. "It'll be midnight soon."
…
Smoke escaped Ciel's lips like a lonely, little ghost.
He tapped his cigarette on the window ledge, back in his familiar haunt and all alone again. The room smelt unfamiliar. Like sweat and sex. His mouth didn't taste like his own. His rolled his tongue over the back of his teeth and spat out the window. The sky lit up, a sparkling whistle shot up into the air and exploded over the city into a thousand, fiery pieces. In the firework's hue he saw the shadowy skyline, could practically hear the gleeful song of two million people.
The light caught on the coins on his dresser. It was handsome. Almost as handsome as the asshole he'd earned it from. Ciel brushed his hair over the back of his ear. It was getting long - so long that the ends touched his prominent collar bone. He knew men like it. He knew everything that men liked. He knew how to force their wallets and their pockets inside-out. He knew there was something about him that drove them wild with lust. He couldn't see it, but he knew how to use it.
Ciel got up and stared back at himself in the mottled, darkened mirror. Behind him, his apartment was so dimly lit that the cracked walls and cheap bed could almost be mistaken for pretty. Ciel turned his face, letting the light catch his cheekbones and the tip of his upturned nose. In this light he figured he was mistaken for pretty too.
He turned his head away from himself. The fireworks popped. The city shook - all the way down to the catacombs and up to the greedy moon. The light rose and fell, faded away into nothing like the end of his cigarette.
Happy New Year, he thought to himself. He ashed the smoke into the tacky bowl that sat beside his small fortune. He smiled.
…
Europe partied. Europe slept.
Europe rolled over and groaned, pulled the curtains shut on the beautiful dawn because the light hurt it's head. The grey, restful dawn came up over Paris. The snow was littered in confetti and glitter, and glass bottles that sparkled like the latter. The poor were awake but the rich were in bed. Church bells were lost to deaf ears as the whole city remained under last night's spell. Except for one stranger, nothing but a suitcase in his black, gloved hand.
His footsteps echoed off the slumbering suburbia, his luggage set in the snow before the magnificent spire of a church - grey and serious as the morning. The stained glass windows ghosted the beauty of impending daybreak. Birds chirped. Vendors stirred. The city yawned and opened her eyes and the stranger watched it all come to fruition - a new day, a new life.
The stranger's warm eyes squinted as the sun finally showed behind the monolithic structure. The smell of fresh bread emerged. The flowers opened. The frost perspired off petals and became fresh dew. What a gorgeous city - if the stranger had only known of the dark district thriving only blocks away from the church. Unbeknownst to the man, he shrugged the sleep off his back and tugged closer the inky black coat that matched the colour of his hair.
He stepped onto the church grounds, shoulders squared with purpose.
…