Hello again! I'm back and with my first Cielois fanfic! I write a lot when I'm upset to help myself cope and this is something that I worked on for a few days and just now decided to finish. It feels weird to write in 3rd person after getting used to 1st person so I probably won't write this way again. It's not my best work, I'm still trying to get used to writing as Alois rather than as Sebastian and my mood at the time didn't help with the OOC-ness, but I hope you guys think it's okay. Reviews are always appreciated!
(Title from 'Scars' by Papa Roach)
WARNING: Contains graphic self harm and suicidal thoughts, please don't read if this will upset you.
Red.
Everything was red.
The once-pristine sheets, the snow colour nightshirt, the milky skin of the boy who laid among the rumbled bedding, smelling strongly of copper.
Blood.
It was everywhere. It stained his forearms, his stomach, his thighs.
It coated his memories and dried under the fingernails that tipped the long fingers of his right hand.
Thin, angry pink lines marked multiple places on his thin frame, raised from the hours of abuse delt to the delicate body by the boy's own shaking hands.
The broken, bleeding flesh in the middle of every scratch was proof that the marks were intentional.
The pain was intentional. The boy's slate hair fell over his eyes, almost completely covering his flushed cheeks, trembling lip, and swollen, watering eyes.
It was on nights like this that the brand on his back burned as fiercely as when the hot metal first made contact with his pale skin, and he hated every second of it.
On nights like these, all of his horrible memories came rushing back. Losing his parents in the fire, his innocence in the cage, his soul to a demon.
All of the terrible things he had seen, from the sacrificing of innocent children, to his aunt's own demise, her life taken right before his eyes by that loathsome red reaper.
The only good thing left in his life was his lover, Alois Trancy. But in moments like these, when the blond earl wasn't here, he broke down completely.
On nights like this, he tore himself apart, all of his pain and regrets laid bare for all to see.
If anyone else was near him, he would be nothing less than the Earl he had been made into.
A facade of pride and coldness set firmly in place, any flaws hidden behind expensive coats and a smirk.
But pride doesn't matter when you have no one to out-do or prove wrong.
When there's no one searching for every possible weakness in you, there's no need to act as if everything is okay.
Because none of it was okay and it was exhausting to pretend that it was.
With Sebastian ordered to gather clues about a string of murders in London without him, he was completely alone, and when he was alone he was no longer Earl Phantomhive, he was simply Ciel.
A boy who had been through far too much at such a young age. In the darkness of his room, there was no one there to clean the mess he had made of his bed or to dry the tears pouring from his eyes onto his bare legs, but he couldn't bring himself to care.
His parents were gone.
His aunt was gone.
He had taken so many lives, had done so many bad things.
Had made life miserable for the families of those who had been used as his pawns.
'I deserve to die' he thought.
'I have nothing left to live for'
He picked up the small letter opener once again and looked down at his left wrist.
It was already covered in crimson liquid.
Skin split open and pouring out the very thing that had kept him alive for thirteen years.
He pressed the silver blade against his wrist again, this time over the vein.
He slid the knife against it slowly, watching as blood poured from it just as it had the others.
Except this time it was deeper.
He fell back into his mind as he repeated the action again a little higher up.
'I don't deserve to live. Sebastian will still get my soul and my suffering will be over'
Too caught up in his racing thoughts, he failed to hear the familiar clicking of heeled boots coming up the stairs and towards his door until it was too late and the door to his bedroom was flung open by none other than his pale haired lover.
Alois stepped in slowly, expecting to find his lover asleep in his bed, where he would crawl in beside him and keep him warm despite the low temperatures outside.
But when he entered, he realized that the younger boy was very much awake.
The blond earl stared at the scene in shock and horror, eyes flicking between his blue haired boyfriend's bloody fingertips and his crimson stained legs and bleeding wrists.
In the year he had known the Phantomhive boy he had never seen him looking so fragile, to say it scared him was an understatement.
He was frozen in place when Ciel looked up, eyes widening when he noticed the taller boy staring at him.
Tears stained the shorter earl's rosy cheeks and his lips were red from being bitten too hard.
His mismatched eyes were pink rimmed and bloodshot and his body was trembling uncontrollable as sobs wracked his small frame.
Alois managed to snap out of his trance-like state after a quiet mumble left the other boy's lips, "Alois?"
"C-Ciel? Darling, what have you done!?" the older boy rushed over quickly, dropping to his knees, and looking the smaller male's legs over worriedly.
Now that he was closer, he could see the full extent of damage done to those long, pale legs and slender arms.
Angry red lines marked up his thighs and inner calves, some still bleeding and some only stained by it.
A few of his injuries were deeper and had been made more cleanly, created by the letter opener he still held loosely in his palm.
Many of them would without a doubt scar over and needed to be cleaned and bandaged to minimize the chance of infection.
The ones on his arms were the most troubling as they were much deeper and placed close to his veins.
Alois was suddenly glad that he had learned to treat wounds before he had contracted Claude.
He quickly took the blade from his lover's hand and tossed it into the drawer of the nightstand by Ciel's bed, before ripping off a piece of the cloth covering the stand and wrapping it around his wrist to stop the bleeding.
He brushed his fingers over a set of smaller scratches lightly, making Ciel wince as pain flared in his arm.
They were still raw and even the softest touch made them burn uncomfortably, but he didn't mind.
The pain was a distraction from his dark thoughts. But when he looked up from the floor and gazed into the other earl's sky blue eyes, that's when the gravity of the situation truly sunk in.
He had seen. The blood. The tears. The scratches. The cuts. Everything.
"Why have you done this?" Alois asked, cupping the injured boy's cheek gently. His touch felt as light as a feather against Ciel's skin, like was made of porcelain and would shatter if the touch wasn't as tender as humanly possible.
The bluenette opened his mouth to reply, but couldn't force any words out.
'What do you say to someone you care so much about after they see you in such a state?
What if this changes everything?
What if he sees me as weak because of this?'
He covered his face quickly as his crying turned into sobbing, trying his best to muffle the disgraceful sounds falling from his lips.
The older boy sighed sadly, blinking back tears of his own, and sat beside Ciel on the plush mattress, pulling him onto his lap quickly, not caring that his purple coat was now stained by blood.
Ciel took short, sharp breaths, eyes widening as it got harder to breathe.
Alois quickly noticed the look of distress on his face and held him tighter, wincing at how painful the breaths sounded.
"Please try to calm down, at this rate you're going to give yourself an asthma attack." Alois rubbed his back with one hand and threaded his fingers in his lover's dark strands of hair with his other hand.
The only reply he got was a small nod and a loud, shaky exhale as Ciel pressed his head against his lover's shoulder.
"Deep breaths, love. Just find something to focus on."
They weren't sure how long they sat there in silence, Ciel being too upset to speak and Alois knowing that actions meant more to his lover than words in times like these.
When he finally felt calm enough to speak, Ciel whispered, "I s-so sorry you have to see m-me this way."
Alois shook his head, hugging his beloved tighter, "You of all people have nothing to apologize for. Especially not about this."
"You're meant to see me as s-strong, not someone w-who's broken." he whimpered, moving to lay his head against his boyfriend's chest instead of his shoulder.
The blond gasped, "Broken? Is that what you think I see you as?"
The younger boy nodded reluctantly.
"Ciel Phantomhive, you are many things, but you are not broken. You've been hurt greatly by people in your past, even people in the present, but you fought through it all. That makes you the strongest person I've ever met, no one else I know could go through what you did and still be sane." he slowed the hand that ran through his hair slightly, hoping to comfort him if only by a little.
Ciel shook his head in denial and gripped the front of Alois' green waistcoat weakly, "N-none of that is true. Besides, I swore to myself that I w-would protect you. Not just from others, but f-from all of this too. I've failed again."
"It is true, I swear to you it is. I wouldn't lie about something like that... And you haven't failed at anything. You shouldn't have to lie all the time, you shouldn't have to put up walls in an attempt to protect everyone else. You're the reason I keep fighting, the reason I can smile and laugh. You protect me from so much, even if you don't realize it. But you don't have to save everyone all the time. Please, Ciel, let me protect you this time." he went silent so that the sapphire-amethyst eyed boy had a chance to think about what he said.
He was silent for a few seconds, eyes widening and tearing up more at his lover's speech, when his reply came it was almost inaudible, "Okay."
Alois nodded in acknowledgement even though he knew the boy still wasn't convinced.
'It's okay for now. A lifetime of hurt can't be healed over night'
"Thank you. If you want to talk about what has upset you, I'm all ears."
"I don't want to talk about it, thinking about it more only makes it worse... Many of the things have happened so long ago, they shouldn't still bother me like they do." he mumbled.
"It's because you've never been given the time you needed to heal properly from what you went through." the light eyed boy whispered, rubbing Ciel's back in small circles.
"Do you ever feel this way?" the bluenette finally had the courage to ask, raising his clean hand to rub his eyes as his sobs started to subside slowly.
"Yes, not as much as I used to, but I still have days like this sometimes."
"So I'm not alone?"
He sounded so forlorn when he said that...
"You're never alone." he planted a gentle kiss on the upset boy's forehead.
"I need to clean and bandage your wounds so they don't get infected. Are you okay with that?" Alois asked, unwrapping his arms from around the younger earl and scooting back to access the damage done to his skin once more.
His left wrist needs to be wrapped at the very least.
"Yeah." Ciel whispered, attempting to stand up on his shaking legs.
"You don't need to be walking right now, your ankle is still bleeding." he stood from the bed and leaned back down to pick up the blue haired boy.
Ciel was about to protest, but changed his mind.
He was too exhausted to argue.
Alois stripped him from his nightgown and set him down on the edge of the bath while he gathered the supplies he needed, returning minutes later with medical gauze, wrap, and healing cream.
He applied the healing cream and covered a few of the injuries with bandages, only using the wrap on the deepest cuts that stretched across his wrists and on his right ankle.
After putting the supplies away and washing his hands, he washed his boyfriend's face with a warm cloth before carrying him back to bed and changing him into a clean nightshirt.
After crying for so long and losing so much sleep, Ciel felt numb and extremely tired.
"Alois?"
"Yes, love?"
"Will you stay with me tonight?" he asked meekly.
The blond boy's heart broke at the sight, "Of course I will. I wouldn't leave you like this."
He removed everything except for his white shirt and shorts before climbing into bed beside Ciel, pulling the blankets over them after he laid down.
He pulled his lover close to his chest, who quickly wrapped his arms around him tightly and laid his head against his shoulder, "Thank you for not leaving."
Alois smiled faintly, "Goodnight, Ciel. Sleep well."
"G'night. I love you." he replied quietly, leaning up to press a soft kiss against his beloved's lips.
"I love you too." the light blue eyed male whispered back, kissing back before resting his chin on top of the grey-blue covered head.
He waited until Ciel fell asleep ten minutes later before losing his eyes, mumbling quietly before he fell into oblivion, "I hope tomorrow is a better day."