Sebastian began to prefer spending time with Ciel to Vincent.
It wasn't terribly hard to do; Vincent never wanted to be bothered while he worked, and Ciel never told Sebastian to leave him alone.
Besides that, Ciel couldn't even hold a candle to being as demanding as his father.
Besides that, Sebastian rather liked looking at the young man. He was definitely the more attractive surviving Phantomhive, his eyes having curved further until they were very catlike, the blue deep and clear, his lips thick and softly pink, which curled into a clever smile or cruel sneer all the same. His skin, still unnaturally pale for a human, had the smallest spattering of freckles across his cheeks and shoulder, and his eyebrows were arched just enough to frame his face with a boldly seductive look. While Ciel's waist thinned, his hips widened, and his shoulders broadened just enough to give him a balanced figure. He was still rather small, exceptionally short for his age, but he used it to his advantage to stay out of sight and get into all kinds of places he wasn't supposed to. Though he was obedient and usually kind, Ciel was too clever to never be mischievous.
He'd lifted the smallest amount of snark from all the time he spent around Sebastian and run with it, and sometimes shot out remarks so quickly he'd hardly known he'd said them.
He was smart, and through he practiced cruelty to the measure that he could be absolutely heartless and destructive, he was usually a kind, helpful, and gentle person, the other side of him only ever made known when he was truly desperate.
He was, truly, a very attractive young man.
There were, however, some very clear downsides to having such an attractive young man kept so far away from people his own age; he was bored far too easily, and he liked to flirt.
Sebastian had to wonder if Ciel even knew he was flirting, because sometimes he really was so innocent it would be hard to tell, but other times there was simply no possible way that he didn't know what he was doing.
Nobody really knew how to react either way, because if they thought he was flirting, they wouldn't dare flirt back, knowing too well who his father was, and if they thought he was joking, it caught them too off-guard to respond.
Take, for example, poor Bard.
Too many times, Sebastian had to save him from Ciel's antics, though Sebastian definitely noticed that Bard never told Ciel to stop.
"Really, Bard, you're so strong. You would make a far better groundskeeper than cook, I think."
Sebastian heard Ciel's voice carry out of the kitchen and sighed, though only out of the exasperation that Bard still hadn't learned to just close the door. Ciel wouldn't go in if the door wasn't open.
"Well, your father hired me to cook, so, you know, that's what I'll do."
Sebastian entered the room silently, and though he knew Ciel saw him, went ignored.
Ciel was sitting on the counter, one hand propping him upright by holding the counter between his knees, other hand resting delicately on Bard's upper arm.
An ashtray sat on Bard's other side, smoke still rising out of it, and Bard was doing his best to not look at Ciel.
There was no way Ciel didn't know what he was doing, smiling so slimly with his eyes heavy and pleased.
"How on earth do you even stay so built when you're working down here all day? Usually I would chalk it up to how thin I am, but…"
Ciel raked his eyes from Bard's neck to his hips, lifting his hand sweetly, fingers curling slightly.
The cook twitched noticeably, trying very hard not to look at Ciel the same way.
Sebastian had no doubt about what Bard was thinking, but would never dare to act out.
"I mean, I do carry around those big bags of flour and materials, and I help load the delivery carts, sometimes."
Ciel gave an airy gasp.
"That's right! It's been so long since I've had the chance to watch products get shipped out from here, I honestly forgot it even happened! Father wants me to study after tea, usually."
"Study what? Haven't you already done all the textbooks you need to go to university?"
Ciel nodded, puffing his cheeks out.
"As if he'd ever let me out of his sight long enough to go to college! He wants me to learn German."
Ciel leaned further forward, swinging his legs playfully. If he was standing, he would be eye-level with Bard's ribs, which was probably why Bard was thrown off that he could look Ciel directly in the eye.
"Don't you already know French?"
Ciel practically purred.
"I do, I'm flattered you remembered! Honestly, I much prefer French to German. It's far more...romantic, I suppose. Don't you think?"
The young man's shoulders gathered up a little as he giggled sweetly. Bard immediately lifted a hand to the back of his own neck, rubbing deliberately as his eyes widened and cheeks flushed.
"I guess I don't know either well enough to say." Bard tried meekly.
Ciel laughed deep in his throat, playing with his food like a spider with his web.
"Well, say, for example, I wanted to say something like...oh, how about something that's supposed to be romantic..? Say I wanted to tell someone that I loved them. In French, if you really love someone, you'd say, 'Je t'adore', but to say the same in German, you'd say, 'Ich liebe dich'."
"German definitely sounds rougher." Bard admitted, clearly trying not to bring attention to what Ciel had actually said.
"It's not that I don't like certain things a little rougher, of course, I just don't think that someone should profess love roughly…language is one of those things that should just flow smoothly." Ciel said idly, bringing the hand that had been on Bard's arm to his lips, pressing into them just enough that it was clear they had give.
It didn't even seem possible that Bard could have gotten any redder, yet he seemed to choke on air and lose his balance at the same time, grabbing the counter near Ciel's hip and trying to make it look natural.
"Alright, Ciel, I think you've kept Bard from getting any work done for long enough." Sebastian finally interrupted, stepping into the room. Ciel turned to him smoothly with an impossibly innocent and devious smile, hands clasped under his chin. His eyes seemed to squint, much like a pleased cat, when his eyes fell to Sebastian's mouth, a flatly unamused line. Bard startled substantially, but seemed grateful.
"Oh, Sebastian, we were just having a nice conversation! You could've told me to leave if I was bothering you, Bard." Ciel pouted childishly, his legs no longer swinging.
"Nobody wants to be rude to you, Ciel." Sebastian answered for Bard, knowing that if he didn't, Bard would practically beg Ciel to come back later.
He crossed his arms primly, never rude, and Ciel cast him a knowing glance before dropping from the counter daintily, first one foot and then the other, like a landing fairy. He pulled his jacket taught and leaned his head against Bard's arm quickly, tilting his head back to look up into his face.
"Thank you so much for letting me speak with you, Bard; I always appreciate your opinions on things." Ciel smiled sweetly, before standing upright and leaving with a sideways glance at Sebastian, his usual request for him to follow that the butler could never refuse.
Bard seemed to relax as soon as Ciel's shoes clicked their way out of the room, sighing deeply.
"Careful, Baldroy." Sebastian warned, watching him stiffen again, "You know holding onto him won't do you any good."
"Right, Sebastian, like you don't see what he does to everyone who takes long enough to give him the time of day."
"It's not his job to make sure people don't think of him like that, but the job of those people to just not think that way." Sebastian answered coldly, turning on his heel and following the younger Phantomhive out into the hallway.
Ciel was waiting for Sebastian just outside the door, and gave him a curious and naïve look as he closed the door to the kitchen.
"What did you mean, 'the way people think of me'?" Ciel paraphrased, holding his hands behind his back.
Sebastian shot him a warning look.
"Really, my lord's son, you're so cruel to Baldroy. You know you torment him."
Ciel gave an innocent tilt of his head.
"He never says yes when I ask him if he's too busy!"
Sebastian began to walk away, knowing he didn't have anywhere to go, and Ciel followed.
"Ciel," Sebastian began tightly, somehow not liking the way Bard had brushed him off, "you know what you're doing when you say things like that. You know what you're suggesting, at least."
"Sebastian, are you implying that I would do poorly by my good family name?" Ciel asked teasingly, swinging up and beginning to lead Sebastian.
"Of course not." Sebastian answered, only after taking a moment to brace himself.
"Damn, I was hoping you had. Would've made my day much more interesting." Ciel responded, ruffling his hand through his hair carelessly. "Come on, won't you help me look after the rose garden?" Ciel asked, taking Sebastian's stiff arm and tugging him gently in the direction of the nearest door outside.
Sebastian agreed, even though he was still burning about before. Even now, he was proven that Ciel touched people; his arm was wrapped around Sebastian's! There was something about knowing that that wasn't special that made Sebastian feel grumpy, a weird human indignance that he hadn't ever really felt before. He didn't like how it made him despise Bard, who was a good man and worthy of affection...just not Ciel's. And the way Ciel pretended that he didn't know what he was suggesting to the man, after telling him about his strength and then implying the 'rough things' Ciel would've liked...that really made Sebastian dig his nails into his hands.
"Why are you so stiff, Sebastian? Do you need to be somewhere? Am I keeping you?"
Ciel asked, stopping and looking at the butler with real concern, and Sebastian sighed.
"No, not at all."
Ciel tilted his head with a knowing look.
"But…"
"But I don't want you to think you can just get away with making Bard feel like that!"
"Like what?" Ciel asked, surprised even. He scoffed after he saw the look on Sebastian's face.
"Trust me, Sebastian, if I was trying to flirt with anyone, it would be obvious. And they would be terrified."
"So you're going to pretend you didn't see how uncomfortable Bard got?"
Ciel smiled deviously.
"Hey, I can't always be held accountable for my actions. After all, I'm just some bored teenager who's kept cooped up and away from people his own age!"
Ciel tucked his hands around his neck, still giving Sebastian that brilliantly evil smile, one that somehow made Sebastian uncomfortable.
Ciel laughed crudely, turning again and resuming his path to the garden. He pushed a door open and stepped out into spring air, waiting for Sebastian to follow.
And Sebastian did, resenting all the while that he was still feeling something about what happened earlier.
"Well, you're getting his hopes up, and you know it's in vain. You're engaged, Ciel."
The young man made a face.
"Yeah, to my cousin, since I was, like, six. It's like being married to your sister!"
Then Ciel laughed again, knowing and dangerous.
"Wait, why would it be in vain? I don't have to get married until Lizzie's twentieth birthday. You, of all people, can't pretend she is going to stay chaste; you've seen how she treats Mey-Rin."
"She treats her the same way you do, Ciel."
Ciel chuckled dangerously.
"What, don't tell me you're jealous! Though, that would explain why you're still worried about it…"
Jealous, that was a good description of what Sebastian was feeling.
"Of course not." Sebastian responded immediately.
The soil under Ciel's shoes crunched as he knelt down, fishing a key to the garden-house out of an azalea bush.
"Then it shouldn't bother you." Ciel finished, another devious smile as he knew he'd trapped Sebastian verbally.
Sebastian simmered in silence the whole way to the garden-house. It was only after Ciel procured a bucket and trowel that Sebastian found it fit to speak again.
"Please don't tell me you plan to actually weed."
"Well, it's not like Finny can tell the difference between a weed and a rose."
Poor, sweet, idiotic Finny, it was true. Sebastian knew that the man was never fit to be a gardener, but he was too kind to ever get in trouble.
So he simply followed Ciel, though he admittedly was unsure why Ciel had requested his company as the young man squatted down and began to reach under the rose bushes in silence, tugging out any weeds that dared to choke his mother's precious roses.
Not, of course, like Sebastian was complaining about being allowed to stand behind Ciel and watching his ass and the curve of his spine.
Hey, he was a demon, he had a right to being a little dirty every now and again.
Ciel tossed a handful of uprooted plants into the bucket and leaned down, taking the trowel in hand and beginning to stab at the earth around a particularly stubborn plant.
"I shouldn't be surprised, really," Ciel finally spoke, words broken apart by the effort he was putting into removing the offending weed, "that anyone in this manor has had enough of me."
With a triumphant tear, he tugged the plant free, tossed it into the bucket, and moved on to the next bush.
"I don't think anyone has had enough of you." Sebastian responded carefully. "Maybe just that you're too much at once for them."
Ciel made a pleased sound.
"I should be much happier when Father finally admits that he's never letting me go to college, at least."
Sebastian paused, because he knew it was true.
"You're only sixteen. You have a few years before you need to worry about that just yet."
"I may be sixteen-" Ciel interrupted himself with a grunt as he freed another weed from the earth, "-but, thanks in part to you, I've completed all the textbooks I need and then some. Hell, we're on my third language, now, and yet I haven't left the province, much less the country, since before this place burned to the ground! I've read almost the entire library, and I'll be honest, though Father hardly notices when I'm not with him, I can't get very far in the 'safety window' of three hours."
Ciel brushed his hands together, freeing them of their dirt, and stood. He reached into Sebastian's pocket too quickly and smoothly for a human to have stopped him, a move Sebastian knew Ciel had learned from him, and checked his pocketwatch.
"Which, speaking of, would you mind terribly putting this trowel back? I'll get the bucket."
Ciel asked sweetly, handing Sebastian back his watch.
Sebastian took it with a knowing and warning smile.
"You know, though you speak of your Father not seeing you, you know how furious he would be to discover where you disappear to."
"Oh, he's only made uncomfortable by the orphanage because he knows that without you, I would've been sent there long ago."
Sebastian's inhuman heart jumped.
"What do you mean, without me?" He asked innocently. Ciel turned to face him and crossed his arms, one hip jutting out.
"Come on, Sebastian, you honestly think I don't know what goes on right in front of my eyes? I know what you are and why you're here, and I'll just be polite in saying that you don't really care about being a butler."
Okay, Ciel was really starting to make Sebastian squirm, but there was simply no way he could actually know.
"No? And what, then, would I be? Why would I be here?"
Sebastian tried, a clueless smile.
Ciel stepped forward.
"Please don't treat me like I'm an idiot. I've spent seven years around you; you have never been on the payroll, you know Latin clearer than anyone I have ever heard, priests included, you have never once ignored a command from my father, no matter what it was, and really, do you think I would honestly believe my father would hire a man with a pentagram tattoo on his hand? You were either sleeping with him or waiting to take his soul, but considering that you let me name you, beast, the only correct answer is the second one."
Ciel smiled cleverly, knowingly, having said all that like he was giving someone the time, and Sebastian could only stare in stunned silence.
"You're not- but you never told anyone. Aren't you afraid of me?"
Sebastian asked dumbly, wanting to step away as Ciel stepped closer.
"Well, of course, I despised you at first; you're going to kill my father, one day, and make it so that his soul can never join with my mother's. How could I not resent that? But then, humans are selfish, as I'm sure you noticed; if Father had died on that night, I would have been alone in this world. And I know what he wants out of your deal. He wants revenge for my mother, wants to burn the person who caused the fire, but I'm sure you know as well as I do that no matter who started the flames, it was because of Father that they did it. He sends you on wild goose hunts, and while I can't admit to understanding why you do them instead of just telling him the truth, you're extending the amount of time I have left with him, and for that I must be thankful. It's true; without you, I would have been orphaned so many years ago, and I doubt you would have made any such deal with me."
Ciel spoke eloquently and quickly, his clever eyes pinning Sebastian in place.
Sebastian laughed. He let his voice warp to whatever it wanted, because how could he care? The boy was right.
"You truly are far too clever for your own good, Ciel."
The young man purred out a laugh.
"I don't hate you, Sebastian. My Father made the choice to give his soul to you. I'm not afraid of you, not even a bit. I've seen the things father would wish I hadn't out of you, but you're more like a human than I think you would care to admit. As far as I have seen from you, when you aren't following my father's orders, you have been kind and helpful, even to people who don't deserve it out of you."
Sebastian bit his tongue. I learned that from you, he wanted to say, but the way Ciel's eyes locked onto his told him that Ciel already knew that.
"Why do you think I'm more human than I should like?" Sebastian decided to ask.
He regretted it as soon as Ciel's eyes turned even sharper.
"Really, Sebastian, you don't think I noticed that you got hard when I started speaking French, and implying what I like to do rough?"
Ciel smiled devilishly as Sebastian flushed, clearly surprised.
"I'll see you soon, demon." Ciel laughed, turning away and heading deliberately towards the stable.