Hey there, readers! I am just on a gleeful writing spree lately. You are all so full of ideas that I have been writing nearly non-stop since the first Kuroshitsuji fic. Haha, it's only been a little while and I feel like I'm getting a slightly better grasp on writing slash…whether that's a good thing or not is up to you. This fic was a request from a friend on DeviantArt, who wishes to remain anonymous, since her family is against her reading yaoi. Don't let them get you down, my love! Judging is silly, don't you think? I hope my story is enough compensation for your trouble. xD Just letting you all know, this fic completely disregards season two of Kuroshitduji. In fact, it's basically AU, but within canon…weird right? Slash love scenes warning applies later. It's Ciel/Sebastian IN THAT ORDER! You'll have to see for yourself. This chapter was written to "Hurt" by Christina Aguilera (for the first part) and "Jar of Hearts" by Christina Perri (second part).

Disclaimer: I don't own Kuroshitsuji. If you sue me, I will be forced to sell my laptop, and then who will fulfill your every smutty literature desires?

They met—again—in a quiet tea coffee shop on the east end of London.

The place itself was not so special in and of itself: just an off-the-beaten-path place called The Grim Steeper, specializing in drinks that no one had ever heard of (but were more than delicious enough) and music that made even the most frugal of souls want to buy something. The clever name drew curious passerby's like flies to honey.

Ciel Phanotmhive, now Ciel Marwick, had also been enchanted mostly from the nostalgia induced by that name. It had been far too long since he had dabbled with the supernatural—even if the shop was only run by humans. Every worker knew his name, his usual order, and charged him half-price. The Phantomhive name, despite being a completely different name now, had not lost a single ounce of its prestige. When Tanaka had taken over, things had been set for the future of the Funtom Company. The man was a visionary (when he was alert enough to think deeply) and had expanded the business exponentially into other areas, including importing different coffees. After his death, the company was given 'new' management. During the Industrial Revolution, as it was apt to be called in the texts, Funtom Company had led the charge in new ideas and creative thinking like introducing coffee into mainstream London living.

Really, Ciel had nothing better to do.

Poor Tanaka, as well as the other servants, had gotten the shock of their lives when their young master returned, unharmed, alive, and looking almost exactly as he had thirty years previous. Tanaka was practically ancient, lying in a bed with the other servants by his side, awaiting death with a peaceful expression. His peace was interrupted when Lord Phantomhive burst through the doors of the room and strode towards his bedside.

"Aaaaaah! It's a bloomin' ghost, yes it is!" Mey-Rin screamed. Long ago, she might have been excited to see such a phenomenon, but the young master had always scared the hell out of her anyways.

"Get my rifle!" Bard hollered, waving his arms like a lunatic while Finny cried and tried to shield himself with his arms. Ciel sighed. Despite the servants growing older (which usually implied maturity)…nothing had really changed.

"Bard, if I was a ghost, a rifle would be useless. As it stands, I am not a ghost, and a bullet through my skull is not the welcome I had in mind."

Everyone stopped their panic and stared at their former master, wondering what kind of madness the ghost could be talking about. "If—if you're really the young master…what did you order me to do when we were trying to capture a picture of Mister Sebastian?" Finny demanded.

The name of the traitor still sent a twinge of anger slinging through his veins. But he replied, "I told you to throw a statue at my head." It sounded even more stupid now than it had then. A twitch of his brow was the only indication of displeasure.

"Oh my god! It's the young master!" Finny yelled, rushing forward to throw his arms around the now grimacing Ciel, sobbing and shouting in his ear. But where a younger Ciel would have pitched a fit, the Ciel who had gone through more than he could describe to return here simply let himself be embraced.

The other two ran forward to join in as well, tears of joy and confusion alighting each of their faces. Ciel looked past them to Tanaka, who simply looked at him with a small smile of welcome.

After the hysterics had calmed, Ciel requested a moment alone with the dying gentleman. Though he was intending to explain everything to the old man, it turned out that wasn't necessary. "I knew, my boy. When you get to be my age, you reflect on things and see the hidden treasures you hadn't known existed," he said in a frail, but gentle voice. There was no judgment hidden in it. "I am…quite surprised though that you have returned. I was under the impression that you owed something to Mister Sebastian."

Ciel's hands clenched into fists. His eye hurt. "I owe that traitor nothing anymore."

Sadness seemed to rise in Tanaka's eyes. "Ah, I see. He didn't do it, did he?"

Ciel nodded, almost miserably. "I asked him if he would make it as painful as possible, and he stared at me for a while. He walked forward a few steps, then, he just…vanished. If that isn't answer enough, I don't know what is. I shouldn't call him a traitor. He was just following my orders, as always," he said bitterly. "Really, that creature is brilliant. He certainly fulfilled my request. I have never been in greater agony than I am now. I was…very naïve…in my feelings for him."

Tanaka said nothing for a moment, letting his dim eyes take in small details of Ciel. The weary shadows that were nearly etched under his eyes, the torn and dirty clothing that no one seemed to have noticed earlier, the scratches on his cheeks and arms where fabric was ripped. It seemed that wherever Sebastian had left him, it had been more than a lifetime away from home. And Ciel had made the journey. He felt a bit of frustration at the man he had mentored. Sebastian may have been one hell of a butler, but he certainly hadn't started out like that. Even supernatural creatures, as Tanaka had learned, were not above burning a delicate pastry.

A brief smile flitted across his face at all the times Sebastian had come to him for advice, or a friendly chat, and once, to vent about some very confusing feelings. "Perhaps you are not the only one in pain, young master."

Ciel's eyes widened, and his hands fluttered uselessly over the duvet, trying to help Tanaka. "Of course! I didn't even think about that you must be tired. I suppose it shows how selfish I really am," he laughed weakly. Tanaka shook his head fondly when Ciel stood to leave. The boy was finally turning into a man, no matter what his youthful appearance showed.

"No, young master, I was not talking about myself."

Ciel turned to look quizzically at his former servant. The old man patted the bed again so that Ciel would sit down. "I was actually referring to a certain friend of ours, who may be doing what, in his mind, is noble." Ciel let out an undignified snort.

"Sebastian? Noble? Don't make me laugh."

Tanaka wagged a finger weakly at Ciel. "As I said, it is noble in his mind. I may have been privy to…certain secrets concerning his feelings about being here. And I am sure they would all surprise you. But that does not matter. What matters is that, perhaps, he is not doing this to punish you."

Ciel closed his eyes, breathing deeply for a moment, before opening them back up. "I can think of no reason he would leave me alive, possibly eternally, other than to make me experience what Hell truly is."

A secret smile stretched the old man's think lips and he leaned in conspiratorially.

"Perhaps, young master, Sebastian is punishing himself."

xXx

The bell chimed as it always did when a customer passed through. Ciel had just finished a meeting with the board, fuming silently at the idiots' ideas for their most recent project. "Who the hell thinks that Funtom making a line of violent videogames is a good idea?" he muttered angrily as he thought about the bad press the company could suffer if any of the games were rated above an 'E'. "Someone is going to get fired for this."

"Oh, but Mr. Marwick! Surely a young man such as you can understand the value of such wholesome entertainment!"

"No, I don't. I hate videogames!" he continued to talk to himself. "And wholesome entertainment, my arse! When I was a child, I played with real guns! I killed real 'zombies'! Look where it got me. Putting ideas like those in kids' heads is not part of the company's mission statement!" His hand fiddled with the string of his eye-patch, a nervous habit he had never broken.

By now, he had earned a curious look from the portly woman who ran the shop. Her flaming red hair piled in a loose bun on her head, she was the embodiment of maternal instinct. "Ah, laddie Ciel, you feelin' alright?" she asked in the concerned brogue of her homeland. When Ciel had first come here, the woman had taken one look at him and clasped him to her bosom, shouting, "Oh my lad, ye look as if ye need a nice, sweet drink in those cold bones!" She proceeded to drag him bodily to the counter, rambling about different beverages and 'ye just pick whichever one ye like!'

Since then, he had sort of adopted her as a surrogate mother, though her affectionate hugs sometimes reminded him a little too much of Madame Red at times. Either way, she was a good woman, and had seen fit to take Ciel under her wing 'like a wee bairn robin!' It was a comparison that irked Ciel, seeing as how it was not the first time he had been called a 'robin'.

Perverted Viscounts aside, he answered, "I'm fine, Mrs. Flynn. Just a little aggravated from the meeting."

The robust woman shook her head and rolled her eyes to the heavens. "Haven' ah told ye tah call me Mamma? Ah'm sorry those gobshites bothered ye."

"You have, not for the last time. And thank you. I could not think of an accurate word to describe the morons, which you graciously provided," Ciel said with a quick smile. Mrs. Flynn snickered and handed him his usual drink: Earl Gray tea with cream and an almost ungodly amount of sugar. He had ventured out and tried various coffee beverages in the past, only to find each more disgusting than the last. Something as bitter as coffee—no matter how sweetened—had no place on his tastebuds.

He went to the window seat, his favorite place to sip his tea and watch people go about their lives. It was rather amusing to make up stories for people who looked a little more interesting than the rest. Sometimes he would wonder what they sounded like, or what they would say if he and they were ever introduced, or what the world would be like if that person didn't exist. More often than not, he found himself saddened by the thought of these people—even though he only saw them for a few minutes—dying one day. It could be as soon as a few minutes from then, or in a few decades. Either way, life was fleeting to one who had seen more than a century and a half. He caught himself wondering if Sebastian had ever felt like this, with the millennia he had probably lived through. His fingers crept up to his covered eye again. It hurt, worse than it normally did when he thought of the raven. Looking absently back out to the street, he catalogued a few faces before suddenly landing on the back of someone new.

The person was tall, almost staggeringly so, and slender in build. He was clad in a navy blue long sleeve shirt that must have been a little warm for this nice weather, and black skinny jeans that were slung low on hips and hugged in exactly all the right places. A chain extended from his belt loops to his pocket, like an old watch. Inky black hair was fairly long and brushing at an ivory neck that Ciel wished to mark up. Ciel flashed a brief snarl of disdain at his nearly drooling mind. Of course the man was attractive; he looked like Sebastian. And if there was one person Ciel had always found devastatingly beautiful, it was his former butler.

He toyed with the idea of asking the man out to lunch, perhaps inviting him back to his house. Ciel had found that though he looked like a boy, people of the business world seemed to just fall at his feet. Whether it was because of his looks, his power and money, or his seemingly innocent character, very few ever told him 'no.' The same went for potential sexual partners. Even the most annoyingly straight men fell to their knees at his come hither looks. What was once taboo and forbidden when he truly was a child living in Victorian London was now fairly commonplace in the twenty-first century. It both delighted and bored him (after all, where had the excitement of discretion fled to?), but it got him what he wanted.

Despite any opinions to the contrary, Ciel was not so selfish that he didn't care for his partners. He never ignored someone after a one-night stand, or turned someone out until they had a place to stay. He remembered each of their names, was a rather attentive lover, thought about what would please whoever he was with. He even dated seriously on occasion, one relationship lasting almost two years before his partner broke it off, saying, "Look Ciel, you know I think you're amazing, but this just seems so…one-sided."

"Aren't you happy, Scott? I thought you liked the little ensemble I put together the other day," he replied, raising an eyebrow suggestively. The blonde groaned before laughing slightly.

"Trust me, Ciel, I liked it very much. But that's not what I'm talking about. What I mean is…it seems like you're off somewhere else when we talk, or when I kiss you or we have sex. And it didn't matter at first, but you've never say, 'I love you' back. It's been frustrating me for a while, but I think you'd be better off finding someone else. Someone who will make you happier than I have."

"I see," Ciel replied softly. "I'm sorry I can't finish what I started, Scott. I'm not ready for something like love. I would have let you move on if I knew that's what you wanted."

Scott smiled and shook his head, threading a hand through Ciel's soft hair. "Ah, it's okay. It was really fun while it lasted, and you're going to make someone really happy someday. God have mercy on the bloke you fall in love with," he laughed. "If this is how you do an affair, then that poor guy doesn't stand a chance if you settle!"

He and Scott stayed friends.

As he was contemplating going outside to talk to the delicious looking man, the figure suddenly turned profile to him, glancing around like he was looking for something. Ciel's brows furrowed. The man really did look a lot like Sebastian. Though he was fairly far away, Ciel could make out sharp, angular features that had an uncanny resemblance to the demon. The man started walking towards the shop, and as he got closer, Ciel's breath caught on an expletive.

It wasn't someone who looked like Sebastian.

It was Sebastian.

Read and Review! Cliffhanger for the win! Aaah, and don't shoot me for not making Ciel a virgin. I'm reeeeally sorry, but no one lives for a lifetime and a half and doesn't have sex. –bows- Forgive me!