Torture and Tea
Chapter 12:
Dinner was excruciating for Ciel as he was itching to go and search Sebastian's flat again, properly this time, but he had to admit that the roast dinner had been cooked to perfection. Even Tanaka had the tendency to overcook the vegetables slightly and cook the meat for a little longer than necessary. The roast potatoes were perfectly crisp and Ciel sighed in contentment before remembering that it was Sebastian that had cooked the meal.
Dessert was the Patience cake that Ciel had ordered Sebastian to bake in a fit of spite because it was such a complex cake. The intern smirked as the butler brought the cake in on a cake stand.
"How long did it take you?" Ciel asked with an evil smirk.
"A minor three and a half hours, it would have been a lot faster if you hadn't removed all the electric whisks from the kitchen," Sebastian answered with a tight lipped smile and an arm that was sore from stirring cake mix by hand.
"They didn't have electric whisks in the Victorian Era... I was just trying to assist you in your research," Ciel said as he tried not to laugh.
Sebastian cut a slice of cake for his master using a knife and cake slice and put it on a patterned plate before placing it in front of Ciel. If the intern was going to have him bake cakes all week without an electric whisk, he would get Repetitive Strain Injury by the end of the week.
"I have decided," Sebastian announced. "The butler will be a demon, he can make cakes at a high speed... so can I have all the electric whisks back?"
The intern eyed the slice of cake critically, counting the number of layers and the number of layers that crisscrossed each other. Then he took a bite and decided that he might as well keep Sebastian in a moderately good mood as the texture and balance of flavours was perfect.
"You can have all the whisks back as, tomorrow I want a six tier cake with Swiss Meringue Buttercream."
Inwardly Sebastian groaned. The boy was clearly planning to work him to the bone so he would be too tired to molest him.
Later that evening Ciel sat out on the landing listening so he would know when Tanaka had ordered Sebastian to start polishing. He would be able to hear as the hallway where the silver was kept, was directly below him. To pass the time he perused one of Sebastian's books which involved an unlikely relationship between two secondary school teachers.
When he heard Tanaka and Sebastian walk beneath him, discussing antique silver and the merits of different brands of polish he crept back across the landing, picked up his backpack and rushed down the back stairs which led directly to the servant's quarters. The structure of the house had remained unchanged since the house was built so all the routes that the servants took were still in place.
Ciel opened the door to Sebastian's bedroom to find that the room was almost devoid of personal belongings presumably because the author was trying to emulate a Victorian butler.
After some mental deduction Ciel calculated that the key to Sebastian's flat was most likely in the pocket of his outdoor coat which was probably hanging up in the wardrobe since he couldn't see it anywhere else in the room. He opened the wardrobe and searched through the pockets of the coat and felt a cold piece of metal.
The intern drew it out to see that it was indeed a key with a fluffy cat key ring attached to it. Ciel rolled his eyes before pocketing it and leaving the room.
He left the house by the back door in the kitchen which was far away from the hallway so his exit would not be heard.
Alois Trancy was settling down with a glass of Pimm's mixed with beer for an evening of working on Ciel's doujinshi when the doorbell rang.
He opened the door to find his best friend, who was dressed completely in black again, waiting outside. Alois' sharp eyes noted that he was breathing heavily.
"Why are you here?" he questioned.
"I don't have much time, can you accompany me whilst I search Sebastian's flat?" Ciel requested.
Alois blinked in surprise. Was his normally straight laced friend planning on breaking and entering?
"Ciel, I don't feel like being arrested today, it's counterproductive."
His best friend held up a key. "I have the owner's key so we are now on the grey side of the law."
"You should have mentioned that first," Alois said amusedly."I'll accompany you, but it's still against the law since you clearly took that key without the owner's consent."
Once they were inside the apartment Ciel flicked on the lights so he could see properly instead of just shadowy silhouettes from the moonlight. Alois took in the details of the surroundings and raised his eyebrows.
"Why does he have so much money from writing smut? I know this is the same size and layout as my flat, but there is an expensive air to this place...why is there a chandelier here?" Alois asked as he looked up at the ceiling which was unusually high considering it was an apartment.
Ciel followed his gaze and realised that he had never taken into account his short height when he had first searched the flat. He hadn't checked anything above his eyelevel and he had never looked up.
His reverie was interrupted when Alois decided to bluntly ask:
"Which room has the bondage collection?"
"Down the hallway... why?"
"I need reference photos for our doujinshi, it's not for personal enjoyment," the blond answered with a grin, "I'll go take some photos whilst you look through his computer. If you feel uncomfortable looking through his video and image collection, just tell me."
Ciel nodded and walked into the study and got down on his knees to stick his hand under the sofa. His hand came into contact with something flat and he pulled out the laptop and the attached power cable.
The intern flipped open the laptop and pressed the power button which did nothing so he plugged the power lead into a socket and switched the power button again which worked. As the computer was loading Ciel pulled out a disc from its jewel case which contained a program from one of his father's contacts who was a computer hacker. Ciel had brought the disc with him as he knew there was no chance that Sebastian's password was anything simple like 'password' or the name of his favourite cat. The man was certainly one hell of a pervert, but he definitely was not an idiot.
The log in screen appeared and Ciel placed the disc in the drive and waited for it to take effect.
When Alois returned with photos of the cat costume Ciel had finished going through Sebastian's documents which were just story ideas and a few drafts and was going through Sebastian's image collection. The first folder had a very large file size and was labelled 'cats'. Ciel clicked on it and found that all the subfolders were also named. It seemed that author spent a lot of his time taking photos of all of his cats.
"I bet we'll find out soon that Sebastian isn't really interested in you, it's just a cover- he really likes cats. I wonder how his fans feel about Bestiality," Alois commented as he looked over Ciel's shoulder. "I think we should add that to our doujinshi."
"It's certainly gross enough," Ciel said distractedly as he had found a folder labelled with his name. "Where on earth did he get all these photos from?"
There were photos of him as a baby, young child, at his 18th Birthday, at presentation evening from when he left college and a few from when he attended Ascot.
Alois leaned closer. "Some of those are from magazines- I recognise that one of you at your 18th Birthday- there was a photographer from a society magazine there."
The future Earl enlarged one of the older photos as he had a feeling that he had seen the image before. It was from a newspaper and he remembered that the article accompanying the photo had been about the kidnapping attempt that had taken place when he was 10. His parents had forbidden him from reading newspapers for about a year after the kidnapping and he had found the article many years later when he had googled his own name.
This meant that Sebastian knew about Ciel's attempted kidnap which had given the boy a fear of being touched by strangers or people that he didn't trust. It hadn't changed the author's perverted attitude towards him which probably meant that he didn't care.
As Ciel was wondering about this Alois swiped the laptop from him as he had spotted something that was bound to traumatise his friend.
"I'll finish this off for you. I really don't want to see you traumatised by anything you see on here."
"Have you found anything yet?" Ciel asked 10 minutes later as he rifled through Sebastian's desk drawers.
His best friend flinched and Ciel knew that the blonde had found something compromising.
"Alois, what did you find?"
"You didn't check if he had files stored on external drives," Alois informed him. "He's written a few drafts for the new book series starring you and the butler which is a self insert of him. He's even incorporated your attempted kidnapping into it and he seems to be having a lot of fantasies involving you."
Ciel paused in the act of tidying up Sebastian's paperclip collection and his blood flow and heartbeat increased rapidly and he felt like he was going to throw up or faint. He clenched his fist until his knuckles became white.
"I'm going to kill him," he said threateningly.
"Ciel, I think you should calm down and have a serious talk with him instead of threatening to kill him," Alois advised. "You might get better results that way."
The butler in question sneezed at the same time he was being discussed and he smirked as he polished a silver teapot. If his assumptions were correct Ciel was going to want to have a serious conversation with him soon on the subject of his latest book series. He also had a proposal that he was planning to bring up during the conversation.
A/N: If anyone doesn't know what Bestiality is, I would suggest looking it up in a dictionary and not googling it.