"Sebastian, you're being entirely inappropriate."

And there it was again, the snobbish behaviour and the slight upward tilt of his face indicating his displeasure with the situation. Small hints of his lord's old behaviour surfaced from time to time, and suddenly it didn't seem as impossible for them to return to the past. Ciel was staring at him now, a tinge of impatience inching into his expression as he waited expectantly for a proper answer. Sebastian schooled his face into a neutral blank and considered his next move.

"These are leftovers from my lord's tea-party this afternoon. I was about to throw them away, and then I thought someone around here could benefit from the scraps."

The boy stares at him for a little while, before a hint of a smile tugs at his lips.

"I thought you demons were supposed to be good at lying," Ciel sniffs, before opening the door wider to admit him and the cakes, which he is dismayed to realise are still hot.

-

He drifts off a little, coming back to himself sharply when he feels a tug on his sleeve. The young Earl was looking up at him, his eyes regaining some of their brilliant clarity, a small hand lifting tiredly to wipe at the blood on his face.

"Sebastian. W-why, do I feel so different. What did you do?"

"Do? Nothing, my lord. You drank some of my blood and that has started to cause certain changes in your body. The entire process will most likely be completed in an hour or two. Please don't worry about it; I'm confident that it will turn out fine."

"What? What changes are you talking about?"

"Well…"

He braced himself for the inevitable backlash.

-

His young lord pretended to be capable of taking care of himself, and Sebastian knew that on some level, the boy could function without him. However, when it came to the aesthetics that took hundreds and hundreds of years to hone to a needle-sharp point, there was no real competition against the taste of the tea brewed to perfection. Ciel was probably lounging around in the living room, his long hair fanned indolently against the black velvet chaise, as he sampled the delicate confectionaries he'd brought with him.

Even after all this time, he was still one hell of a butler.

While the tea steeped, he had precious minutes to spare. He managed to wash a basket of laundry, dust the shelves, polish the floors and shine the windows, until the sound of a throat being cleared loudly from the living room, reminded him that this was no longer the Phantomhive mansion and he was no longer required to singlehandedly maintain the basic upkeep of a vast estate.

Even so, for the house of his master to be in such disarray…

He sighed imperceptibly, bringing the two cups of tea back into the living room without further ado.

Ciel spared him a long, amused look.

"Got seduced by the laundry basket on the way out, did you?"

-

It was a little ironic how the common ambition to prolong life and vigour, had the fruits of its labour fall so easily into his unwilling master's lap. At the ruins, he had but a few moments to decide on his course of action as Ciel's condition deteriorated visibly with each passing second, oblivion taking him when pain had proven superior to his determination. So he had taken matters into his own hands, even while knowing that Ciel would be angry. He had been cautiously optimistic that his young master would be relieved when he learnt that he would no longer suffer the ravages of time, but it seemed that the child had more comprehension of the subject than he had previously assumed.

There was one catch to this immortality that Sebastian offered. True immortality could only be given to the angels or the demons that scoured the earth in search of their prey. The violent transfusion of his own blood into the young master's bloodstream, had only offered an imitation of eternal youth.

The young master would age, surely, but the years had lengthened for him as it did for no one else.

He would remain a child, past the age where his childhood companions had grown old, and died. He would remain youthful beyond the fall of exalted Britain's empire, the echoes of the gunshots of the great wars and the rise of new and powerful young countries. By the time Ciel became an adult, he would have survived longer than anyone he could possibly known, condemned to live until his lifespan was cut short, unnaturally or otherwise.

He wasn't impervious to injury, nor was he protected from death in any form. Sebastian had counted on that, trusting himself to be the one to end Ciel's misery, when dotage bore upon his young master, as it did for no one else on the planet, leaving him helpless and in the grip of pain for an uncountable number of years.

In the meantime, he could only protect and serve.

-

"Life at the Whitfield's has been fine, thank you for asking." Sebastian said casually, sipping his tea.

Ciel merely rolled his eyes at the jibe, his fingers tugging absently at the collar of his shirt. All this time had passed and Sebastian was amused to find that the young master's preoccupation with his cravat had remained constant.

"Well. You are a butler to the core after all. I trust you haven't been giving your new master any grief?"

His smiled broadened.

"Ah, but he claims to love games as well."

Casual. Deliberate. He aimed for perfection in his tone of light teasing, and came up with something that breathed of cruelty and aimed to hurt. It seared him when Ciel pinned him with a look so intense it seemed to settle and burn right through him, leaving him exposed and faintly insecure when seconds slid past, and nothing was said.

"Does he now?" the young man murmured at last, his eyes dark and unreadable as he stood to leave.

-

The lord had cooped himself up in his room for the past few days, only emerging long enough to have his meals before retreating into the familiar sanctuary. He had seen too many traumatised children to find this an unusual behavioural pattern. They clung to the familiar, desperately avoiding any fragment of contagion with that which was deemed threatening to their mental stability. He was beginning to think that a severance of their contract was impending, until the young master woke up one morning and calmly requested for him to arrange a meeting with the Marchioness.

He hadn't liked the idea of his lord making the young lady Elizabeth cry, but he had his orders to stay out of Ciel's affairs and allow him to handle the last of it. Sebastian didn't like the air of finality that turn of phrase portended, but he couldn't claim to be surprised either when his young master had called for an annulment of his engagement to the Lady Elizabeth that same morning.

His young master did have the grace to allow the Marchioness and her daughter to learn of his decision before he sought the Queen's approval. It wasn't an affair that needed further spectacle to add to its impropriety, but oh, how the girl wept, her tempestuous emotions in utter upheaval in light of Ciel's betrayal. She had been the first to welcome Ciel back amongst the ruins of London, and her feelings had rebounded tenfold in her joy to find her fiancé alive and well. The latest revelation threatened to break her spirits completely, and the Marchioness had mercifully sent Elizabeth home to await her decision on the matter.

Since young, his young master had always been cautious in his dealings with the strict Marchioness, Frances Middleford, a woman of unshakeable principles and cast iron will. Hence, Sebastian hadn't expected to be ordered into the room where they were having a personal discussion. It might have been a heated one, except for the steely look in Ciel's eyes which indicated otherwise.

"What is the meaning of this, Ciel? Surely you do not believe this to be an appropriate time to assign household chores to your butler?" said Lady Frances, her tone scathing.

"Take off your gloves, Sebastian," was the quiet reply.

Calmly, the boy reached behind him and slid the eyepatch off with practised ease, revealing the eye that glowed an uncanny purple. Sebastian distantly heard the woman gasp, but his attention focused on his small master, his frail shoulders steadfast as he coolly explained the intricacies of their intimate relationship.

Butler. Murderer. Demon.

Silence fell over the room when his young master had finished speaking.

Then her voice, soft and pained,

"…after today, I have no nephew. I will approve of your decision to annul the engagement."

"Lady Middleford…" Sebastian began.

"I have no business with you, demon. And Ciel, if your parents had known how low you have fallen, you would have made them weep in grief, more so than anything else in their lives had given them cause to succumb to despair."

She left the room, her head held high as she swept out, ignoring Sebastian's perfunctory bow.

In front of him, Ciel's expression was unreadable as he continued to gaze out of those tall glass windows wordlessly, his knuckles turning white as he gripped the window ledge, the light throwing his form into shadow.

-

He picked up a magazine, mindful of his position as an unwelcome guest, although Ciel hadn't ordered him to depart immediately. The living room was unexpectedly neat in comparison to the rest of the apartment and he wondered how he had never noticed that before. He wondered briefly what Ciel's bedroom would be like, but he had an inkling that it would be as messy as the kitchen and the small balcony that had open boxes thrown into some semblance of order at the side.

A small windchime hung over the balcony, chiming morosely with the night breeze.

There were few things in the living room; several pieces of black furniture, velvet sleek and lush in their exotic appearance in comparison to the flaking ceiling and the pale lines of water marks that skimmed several of the walls.

Sebastian's eyes widened in shock as Ciel emerged from his bedroom, shaking out his hair from its loose ponytail. His eyes were rimmed in black, making them look wider and more childlike in the sharp, pale face. A white shirt was loosely buttoned, exposing his collarbones and low enough to fall to his hips, giving him the impression of one that fully expected to lose the clothes as easily as they had been pulled on. The light blue jeans clung to him and made Sebastian uncomfortably aware of his own inclinations, and the disturbing surge of desire to make Ciel yield, to surrender in this endless game so he could claim his prize. It would be so easy, he thought, watching Ciel brush his hair out, his bare feet leaving droplets of water across the smooth concrete floor.

But that would be an act that threatened to expose him too, a capitulation that risked Ciel learning exactly how much he affected Sebastian with the barest of actions; the shrugging on of a jacket, the rhythmic sway of a sleek ponytail, the gentle wave of a hand, both elegant and bored.

He would never let Ciel learn of this foolish weakness.

"I suggest you leave before my client comes," Ciel said mildly as he fastened a necklace around his neck.

Client? He wasn't even been aware that Ciel had been working. He watched dumbfounded as his lord unbuttoned another button at the top of his shirt deliberately, his eyes catching Sebastian's as he did so. When it clicked in his head, disgust, contempt and rage fought for dominance in him, his fury inexplicable and tempting him to tear apart the boy's client and all the others that had dared to touch what was his.

"Why?" was all he could manage through gritted teeth, unwilling to crack and reveal his horror that someone else had gotten to his young master before he did, the sharp sting of shame and jealousy twisting in him like a sharp blade.

Ciel shrugged elegantly.

"It pays well and it's all the same to me."

"Young master, I invested those stocks for you personally. I balanced your chequebooks and I knew exactly which banks to place the Phantomhive's liquid assets into to maximise your funds. I can even tell you precisely to the last digit, how much money you have earned from the interest alone, and that it is a sum which entire families can survive on for the rest of their lives if they spent wisely."

"So, tell me, why do you have to resort to this?" he asked bitterly, unwilling to let his last semblance of restraint slip from his fingers, lest he succumb to his baser desires and violate the tenuous bond between them with his harsh actions.

Ciel didn't answer for some time, choosing instead to open the front door and letting the cold December wind blow into the apartment, filling it with that same aching nostalgia, memories of gentle rain against the water's surface, the last of the ashes falling from scorched roofs, and the dust sparkling in the morning light as the taste of molten chocolate in his mouth blended with the bitterness of fallen pillars in off-white marble, cobbled together in the courtyard where only the two of them had stood...

The child who had lost all knowledge of laughter, turned to smile at Sebastian faintly.

"This is how I choose to live."

END CHAPTER