The Kiss


Her birthday was in the spring. During the coldness of winter, when hats and scarves were bundled around protesting children every time they went out, Ciel taught Julie games he half-remembered from when he had been a child, and she, in turn, showed him ones that had been invented since. He arranged an outing for the whole orphanage to see the musical of Peter Pan that had come out the past year, and when she had exited, walking among groups of girls and boys, singing their favorite songs, chattering about their favorite parts and re-enacting the fight scenes (mostly the boys did that, if truth be told) her eyes searched the grey pavement until she caught his eye beside him, and she waved.

"Who are you looking at?" another girl asked. She could see no one. Julie laughed, and brushed it off; but her cheeks were glowing from more than the cold, and when she looked back this way, she murmured, "thank you—"

He didn't know for what.

Winter was loosing its grip. The air that came in her window when she opened it at night (and he still couldn't help the retort that it would let the miasma in. Julie laughed carelessly and said, "what does it matter, anyway?") was not so biting as it had been.

"I was just thinking," Julie said one day, looking at the girls asleep on the other beds; they had been giggling and talking about the boy one of them had kissed. "I've never done that."

"Acted like a gossip?" Ciel said.

"Kissed anyone," Julie replied, ignoring his sarcasm. "I was thinking that I'll be dead soon. They'll go on to kiss other boys, and get married, and have children, if they're lucky, and they'll have family over on Thanksgiving, and go to movies and musicals and buy a house and a hoover—"

"What do you want with a hoover?" Ciel muttered, beside her.

"And a car," she continued, "—and I'll never have any of that." She leaned back, her head landing on the pillow beside his with a thump.

"I don't want a hoover," she said.

"Liar," Ciel said. "I should get one for you. You can put it on top of your dresser."

Julie snorted. "It wouldn't even fit there."

She turned to face him and bit her lip. He could feel the weight of her gaze on him; considering; more than a little shy. She looked over his dark hair, and his cold blue eyes; her gaze hovered on his mouth. Then she looked away.

Ciel said nothing.

"What would you say," she said, at last, "if I asked you for a kiss?"

"You know I'll do anything you want me to do," Ciel said.

"Please don't say it," Julie said, staring upward at the blank cinder-block ceiling. "Don't say I have to order you. That would spoil it. I'd rather you just said no."

"Why?" Ciel said. "Don't you want a kiss? I'd make it enjoyable for you."

"You don't understand," Julie said. Her voice sounded wet; she'd started crying. She blinked back her tears, annoyed, and hid her face under her arms, rolling over so that when she spoke, her voice was muffled into her pillow. "You're just a demon."

Ciel blinked at her. Her words had surprised him—he didn't know how. It felt like something sharp had lodged itself in his chest, and stuck there. After a moment, he remembered that he'd never told her he was a demon. She'd never asked.

"Is that so," he said flatly. He sat up and leaned back against the wall, and she moved her hand away, peering up at him suspiciously; as though she'd noticed something unusual in his tone.

"Aren't you?" she said, at last. "What else tries to steal people's souls and take them to hell?"

"I did not steal your soul," Ciel said, with an icy voice. "You gave it to me, fair and square. Or have you forgotten?" She shrank back.

"Of course," he continued. "Winter is ending, your death is coming closer—what a perfect time to re-work the story; it wasn't your fault, not any of it. Oh no, you were the innocent here, weren't you?"

"I didn't—" he didn't wait to hear what she didn't.

"Tell me," he hissed, sliding closer to her, pressing her up into the head of the bed, that space between the dresser and the wall, "what do you think this mark is all about, Julie?" He reached for her forehead and brushed the bangs aside, putting his left hand to the mark. In the force of his anger, it started to glow purple, and she bit back a whimper of pain. "Did you really think you'd get a perfect little fairytale? Is that what you wanted?"

Her eyes were brimming with tears, but her mouth was an angry line. "I didn't mean it. I'm sorry."

"Of course you are," Ciel said with false sweetness, vehemently. He didn't let go.

"Get off me!" Julie yelled. If the magic wasn't in place, surely someone would have come running—but no one could hear her now. "That's an order, Ciel, get off me—get off me—"

He took away his hand and pushed himself away, up against the wall. He stared blankly out into the room.

"I'm sorry," she said again.

"It doesn't matter," Ciel said.

"It does," she said. "I was being stupid. I'm just scared, like you said, and I said something I didn't mean, and… I hurt your feelings. I'm sorry."

Ciel laughed. "You shouldn't be apologizing to me," he said.

"But you're right," Julie said; her voice was so earnest, like she was trying to explain. "I knew what I was doing, when I made the deal with you. It wasn't your fault."

"No one can know what they're doing, when they make such a decision," Ciel said. "Except those that offer it." And sometimes not even them.

"You always say that," Julie said.

"It's true."

Julie laughed bitterly. "Oh, Ciel; why do you think you even came? Maybe you didn't know what I was thinking, but it was… terrible things. And I meant every one of them. I'm not perfect," she said, looking at the ring on her finger, turning the shining pink this way and that. "I'm really not."

The only thing Ciel had heard was despair and loneliness. The only thing Ciel had heard was please, somebody help me, anyone, I don't care who. So what if she had renounced God? So had he.

She still didn't deserve this.

"That friend of yours," Julie said, at last. "The one you're going to give me to, when I'm dead—what's he like?"

"He's…" Ciel stopped. He didn't have any words, or whatever he was thinking seemed all balled up and like it would come out wrong if he spoke. "I don't know."

They'd lived together for three years when he'd been human, but all he'd gotten to know then was Sebastian, his butler. There was something else, beyond that—something possibly inconceivable, something that still tolerated him, somehow, even now—after everything he'd done; after everything he was still doing. He was so afraid. He had always been so afraid—even before he'd found out the truth—that maybe it was all just a lie, a comforting dream. Perhaps—that was the worst nightmare of all—perhaps Sebastian didn't give a damn about him. Perhaps his soul was all he'd ever been good for.

No. His thoughts were going round, not making any sense. Ciel knew his soul was all he'd ever been good for. Sebastian had told him so enough times. If he'd ever thought otherwise, it had been in a childish wish to delude himself.

The problem was never that Sebastian didn't care about him enough. The problem had always been that he cared too much about Sebastian. He did still.

And what did he do for him, caring so much as he did? Keep him in eternal servitude. Cultivate some girl's soul as a gift the demon would probably laugh at, when it came, and refuse to eat out of spite.

He didn't want to give Julie to Sebastian. He hadn't wanted that for some time now. He wanted to eat her himself—but it was more complicated than that. He didn't just want to eat her. Yes, he thought about how good her soul would taste, he agonized over the fact that it would never really belong to him, but… he just wanted her to be happy. He wanted to listen to what she would say next, he wanted to see her smiling and laughing with her friends. He wanted to be with her at her lowest, and at her highest. He wanted to see what she would make of herself, if she lived enough, because he knew it would be beautiful.

He didn't know what he was feeling at all.

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