Learn to Live

I am SO sorry that it has taken this long, and I know that since most of you read this for the main pairing, this isn't necessarily what you want to see :(

I was having a HUGE writer's block, and I'm not too happy with this one...I've designated the pairings for all of the chapters so far, and I just couldn't bring myself to force this one out. I feel so awful about it. The next one is Claude-centric, and hopefully that one will be out very very soon. I want to thank all of my wonderful reviewers, and all of you who have stuck around to read my story. I love you!

Chapter 14 - Chess

Ciel has never lost a game of chess, until today. Until Sebastian. Then again, he has never played with a physics professor before, or any sort of professor, or anyone who has the ability to distract him that Sebastian does.

This man has decimated him in more ways than one.

He no longer thinks the same, no longer breathes in exactly the same manner as before. He does not speak the same way, he does not act the same way; he has even altered the way he writes his name. He dresses differently - and it's completely unnoticeable, but Sebastian Michaelis has changed his entire being. He feels it, senses it in his shoes, his hands, in his thoughts. In his eye. In the air.

Ciel has always enjoyed a good game of chess, but finding a good opponent was always a problem. Alois had no interest in chess, calling it boring and trivial and Ciel wasn't going to be a general or some shit, so why was he playing it? The few times the boy had actually gotten Alois to play with him, he had either lost on purpose or gotten too distracted to make it through half of the game. His attention span was already drastically low - and Ciel always brought out the worst in him.

Ciel brought out the worst in a lot of people. Like Sebastian, for example. He'd never really been interested in anyone before, yet alone a thirteen year old boy. But there was something about Ciel Phantomhive that drew him in, something that made him a different person in the boy's presence, simply because he was there, because he existed. In some invisible way, Sebastian and Ciel were always engaging in a game of chess. It was a game of change - of adapting to the opponents strategy using it to create one of your own. But this was not chess, or war, or deceit, or love, even.

This was not one of Ciel's chess games.

Alois told him that he would get stuck one day, stuck between love and obligation, between his affections and his ambitions - and to use one of Ciel's favorite phrases, he told the boy it was a checkmate he wouldn't be so easily able to wriggle his way out of. Ciel knows now, that his best friend was right; he can see the day coming now, clear as day. He must be able to choose between Sebastian, and the past he cannot let go. When he first asks himself, he is not so sure, and yet the tall, raven haired man is beginning to occupy the places in his mind where memories once were. Slowly, his forces are crumbling - and just when he thinks he has nothing left, there is Sebastian's voice in his ear, quiet and unassuming. Checkmate. He will not be afraid to fall, not anymore, because he is changed, he is reborn, and this man who has broken him and built him again is still by his side. Someone is finally there to catch him.

Sebastian has won.

He smiles.