2/ nausea
He has seen many masters struggle with the knowledge of their identity as nothing more than food, with their interpretation of that final end-state toward which all else now inexorably gathers, but he has never yet come across something so small, so unformed. And because Ciel wants so desperately to show he is affected by nothing, here he can come, Sebastian: creeping ever closer. am i disturbing you? (with such a condescending smile)
of course not
Of course not! How foolish his young master is. Yet there is something like acceptance in it that he turns over and over as though looking for the flaw in a shining sapphire, polishing it ever further, only to find new facets and dazzling depths.
He will not be appeased, he knows, until every winding corridor is made in his own image; the final and most blasphemous act of creation. What is care, if it wishes only to destroy? There is, and has never been, any other conception to a demon. The beauty of debasement is theirs, always.
And he creeps so carefully into the unprotected spaces of the child's self that he hardly takes note of how the child follows him back into the untouched recesses of his own mind. (Or if he does, then even his own overthrow is a triumph.)
/
Something in the tea had disagreed with him, Ciel thought; lying on cold porcelain tile and retching into a toilet. In the doorway, he could feel the glitter of Sebastian's eyes: and he turned with a glare to his demon who had, of course, the perfect mask of concern, only. As if the damn thing hadn't poisoned him.
"Is something amis, my lord?" Sebastian asked.
Ciel snarled, baring his teeth. "Do you think I'm puking up my guts just for the entertainment factor?"
"Well, you see, I didn't wish to presume," Sebastian said. He stepped inside, gently brushing sweat-sticky hair from Ciel's face, gloves pressed against skin soft and burning with fever.
"You're very warm. Perhaps I should put you to bed."
"If you do, I'll puke again," Ciel said tightly, clutching one arm across his roiling stomach. "Degenerate creature, you'd bore yourself to madness if you didn't torment me." He cast one glance over at Sebastian, who watched him with a careful, blank expression, as though he hadn't a clue what Ciel was speaking of. "Or are we pretending this was an accident?"
"My lord." Sebastian spoke with such affront; and neglected to answer: of course it was too soon for the demon-butler to tip his hand. Ciel could order him to, but then, if he did, this game was over, and he'd never have discovered Sebastian's true purpose. And it would be back to wandering around this not-a-house in hell, waiting for their time to run down. How he missed earth! The dependable sun, reappearing every morning to spite the night's gentle embrace… here everything was grey, neither purely dark nor light, a muddied conglomeration of only the meanest aspects of existence.
Ciel looked away, letting the touch of Sebastian's glove against his neck, the slow, swirling points of his fingertips, chase through the sudden dizziness that raked its way like throwing stars across his eyes.
When Sebastian put one arm under him and lifted him he groaned, hand twisting in the fabric of Sebastian's suit, and swallowed down another tilting wave, bile pressed back only with difficulty, the sting of acid in his mouth. It was hot: much too hot when Sebastian brought him into the bedroom and laid him down, and he tossed off the blankets the butler tucked around him and then pulled at the collar at his throat. "Seb—Seba—s—"
"Shh," Sebastian said gently, sitting beside him on the edge of the bed. "Don't try to speak."
"Don't you… dare try to order me… about, demon," Ciel muttered, closing his eyes. Darkness crept in, kindly, from all sides, and his fingers caught at the buttons of his shirt. After a moment he could feel Sebastian's hands taking up the task, soon divesting him of his outer clothes, which he pulled off with much tugging this way and that as Ciel struggled, limply, to help. Then, naked from the waist up and still shivering, Ciel pressed his fingernails like claws into Sebastian's shoulders as the butler painted dry, swirling patterns of his hands over Ciel's chest, all of him aching, burning. Ciel felt a wave of nausea envelop him again and made it half to sitting up before he had puked again, all over Sebastian's front and his own.
"My, what a messy little thing you are," Sebastian said, as Ciel heaved bloody streaks of spit from his fanged mouth, viscous streaks that Sebastian cleaned with his gloved thumb.
"You're disgusting, Sebastian," Ciel said, as Sebastian pushed him gently onto his back again and bent down to lick the vomit from his skin with tiny, pointed kitten-licks. Ciel reached down, and yanked at Sebastian's hair with taloned hands, pulling the butler to face him. "You like to see me sick and defenseless," he accused.
"How could I not?" Sebastian said, with the edge of a smile in his voice. "You paint such a pretty picture that way." Ciel saw Sebastian's curled fondness, his excitement, and felt an uncanny warmth of his own care that almost crept onto his own scathing look. If he hadn't felt so awful he would have laughed.
"You make a terrible pet, Sebastian," he said smartly. "If I look away for one minute you're tearing things to pieces for my regard."
"Perhaps I merely make a terrible dog," Sebastian retorted. "Not everything can be tamed so."
Ciel sighed, tracing one hand down his butler's face. "I know," he said quietly. "And I wouldn't want you to be." He caught—before it was covered up by teasing—a quick flicker of surprise, of something hollow and uncertain, bitter and terrible, a trapped and wounded animal behind Sebastian's gaze. He cursed Jack, and the unraveling he'd made of Sebastian, setting up the trial that stripped the demon of all he was—they hadn't spoken of it, but Ciel had seen what being in hell, like this, stationless and alone, made of the proud creature; he didn't begrudge Sebastian his acting out.
Ciel would be glad to put this all behind them. When they could resume their life on earth again, when Sebastian would be able to be… not free, of course. Ciel had not freed him before, and he certainly couldn't now, now that Sebastian had nothing left but Ciel's own protection. If it was unforgivable to destroy a creature so far that it could do nothing but depend on you, it was unutterably worse to do so and then abandon it.
.
.
.