Hello, everyone, sorry for the extremely long delay on this story! D: Life sort of got the better of me for a while, and I really didn't have any inspiration for this, but here it is, finally.
Disclaimer: I do not own the characters or the series (Kuroshitsuji). I also do not own the poem/sonnet titled Eden, by Anthony Burgess.
Eden
Part ll: Temptation
While the delicate filthy hand dabbles and dabbles...
He's forcibly snapped back into reality by the bitter sting of nails digging into his cheeks. A narrowed, cold blue eye and smirking red lips are much too close to his face.
"What were you thinking of, detective? Or rather, who?"
Earl Phantomhive shifts and Aberline tries to break his gaze away from the boy's gloating face, but he finds he cannot and he can't and those eyes-
"Me?"
Aberline wakes up.
Aberline has not seen Ciel Phantomhive since that day in which he intruded upon the Earl's parlor. Needless to say, after Ciel had his moment of gloating laughter, he was promptly escorted to the door of the manor, bidden farewell, and shut out completely from both the manor and the boy's life.
Not that I ever really had been a part of his life, the detective supposes, as he struggles through the piles of freshly fallen snow on the streets.
He tells himself that everything is just fine.
Everything is as it should be. He need not meddle in the life of someone who does not want to be saved.
Pausing in his trek for just a moment, Aberline closes his eyes and takes a few deep bre–blue eyes his lips look so red and they are so close but they are not mine to taste -
Aberline wonders why he cannot control himself. It sickens him.
He is in a fairly important meeting with the assistant commissioner of his division, but his mind is wandering. His mind keeps wandering back to that suspicious butler, to the twisted conversation he'd had with Ciel in the boy's parlor, to those dreams in which Ciel is writhing, moaning, and arching his back off the bedsheets.
He's trying to concentrate, really. He needs to concentrate. He hears the head detective droning, the large clock ticking, a chair squeaking as someone shifts slightly in their seat. He sees a black haired detective readjust his collar and look briefly outside the window. He follows the patterns on the wood of the table he's sitting at. He looks everywhere in the room but at the assistant commissioner. Finally, finally, when he has run out of things to stare at, Aberline uncomfortably focuses his attention on the assistant commissioner's tie.
He has to put an end to this sickness. He has to concentrate. He tries his very best to concentrate, but he finds he cannot and he can't and-
"Detective Aberline, is there a problem?"
Aberline looks up quickly and meets the disapproving glare of his boss. The assistant commissioner's narrowed eyes make his displeasure with Aberline quite clear.
"N-no, not at all, sir. Please continue."
Aberline thinks his lack of attention might have something to do with the color of the assistant commissioner's tie. It is a deep, enrapturing sapphire blue.
He has tried many, many times to contact Ciel again. He's sent letters, verbal messages, and even made a few visits to the mansion in order to try to speak with the boy. All of his attempts have been unsuccessful. Although he is frustrated that he is being ignored, a part of him believes that keeping his distance from Ciel is for the best. It might finally put an end to his sinful obsession.
Detective Aberline sees Ciel Phantomhive much earlier than he would ever have expected.
It isn't at the Phantomhive mansion that he sees the boy, or at a crime scene, or at a fancy opera on opening night.
He sees the boy in an alley, beaten and broken.
He had been walking home from work, watching the vivid white snow falling from the sky, when all of a sudden, he had heard an audible groan and a curse. Aberline looked around him instantly, trying to assess from where the noise was coming from. His eyes, practiced and well-worn, combed for details in the flurry of white snow.
Another groan, a thud.
Aberline immediately swiveled to his left, and looked down a cramped alleyway. Even through the snow, whipping and whirling about him, he could only see one thing.
Sapphire.
As he pours warm, freshly brewed tea into two old porcelain teacups, Aberline wonders why God has seen fit to put him to such an extreme test. Why had God chosen to put Ciel Phantomhive in his path, earlier today? Why had he bothered stopping in the middle of a snowstorm to investigate a tiny, inconsequential sound? Why had he brought the little Earl to his house rather than to a hospital or to a doctor's office? It is almost as if God is testing his control.
Ciel Phantomhive lies sleeping on his sofa, wounds cleaned and bandaged.
Ciel Phantomhive lies sleeping on his sofa, weak and defenseless.
I am not a monster, Aberline tells himself desperately, I am not.
He is most definitely not thinking about how he could easily pin those fragile, slender wrists to the cushions of the sofa and take and claim-
The porcelain teacup in Aberline's hand rattles a little, and some of the scalding-hot tea sloshes out and splashes onto Aberline's hand. The detective hisses and drops the teacup, which shatters noisily into a million tiny pieces on the cold, hard floor.
The combination of the teacup breaking and Aberline hissing has caused enough of a ruckus to wake the –pretty, pretty, no don't think- boy up, apparently, because suddenly Aberline hears a blanket rustling and hears a quiet swear. Aberline, torn between cleaning up his mess or addressing the boy, is completely unprepared for the weight of the questioning gaze that he feels settling upon his shoulders.
The detective knows that he should ask after the boy's wellbeing. Despite the fact that the boy had appeared to be covered in blood, the wounds he had received had not been severe. Aberline gathered that the blood had not all belonged to Ciel- it was possible that one of his attackers had been wounded in the scuffle as well. Still, despite the lack of life-threatening injury, the detective knows that it is very likely that the Earl feels some sort of lingering pain that has yet to be tended to.
"God," Ciel says, "I feel like.."
The boy trails off and licks his lips. Aberline forces himself to grab a rag and bends down to clean up the spilled tea to avoid any sort of temptation at the sight.
Silence reigns for a few sluggish moments.
"How did you find me?" Ciel asks instead, and does not elaborate on his condition. He looks around, taking in the unfamiliar room. He's been lying down on a couch in a living room, of sorts, of the house he supposes belongs to the detective. Behind him, he spies a few bookshelves chalk-full of old novels and reference manuals. Ahead of him, the living room gives way to the kitchen; the distinction is made clear by a long, sturdy countertop bisecting the two areas.
"I was coming home from work when I heard noises in an alleyway," Aberline replies, but still he does not look up from his task of cleaning the spilled tea and clearing the porcelain shards off of the kitchen floor. "I felt compelled to investigate, and I stumbled upon you."
Aberline hears rather than sees a faint smile whisper over the boy's lips.
"I suppose I'm lucky that you found me, then. I just might have died out there, in the snow."
No, you're not lucky at all. I might hurt you if I can't control myself. Stop looking at me with those eyes-
Aberline accidentally cuts his finger on a shard of porcelain and winces. Almost immediately, a few beads of blood rise to the surface and begin oozing out of the cut. Despite the blood dripping down his finger, Aberline remains crouched on the floor makes no move to wipe the blood away. Although now is most definitely not the time for his mind to be wandering, in his head he runs through a few lines he'd heard in a poem, once:
The thin hand held in the river which can never
Clean off the blood, and so remains bloodless...
His hand is not bloodless.
The detective feels almost as if he is in a daze. He should be asking Ciel what happened, or he should be asking why Sebastian was not with him at the time of the attack, but he finds himself unable to talk.
"Why is it-" Whatever Ciel had been about to say is cut off abruptly by a series of dry coughs.
The detective blinks rapidly a few times and wills his head to clear. He should be worried for Ciel's health, first and foremost. The coughs finally die down.
"Are you alright?" Aberline asks. The man's worry rings clearly through his query.
"I think I'll be fine, I just- is there anything I could drink? My throat feels dry and extremely sore."
Slowly, Aberline gets up from his position on the floor, but he turns away from the boy to dispose of the porcelain shards before he begins to address him.
"Yes, in fact, I've made you tea already. It's over on the countertop." Aberline hesitates slightly before adding, "Do you think you'll be able to walk on your own?"
The boy makes an indignant noise. Aberline almost very nearly turns around, but he somehow manages to hold himself in his place.
"I've got some cuts and bruises, but I am in no way a cripple."
Ciel Phantomhive has always been an extremely proud child. Child-
"Sorry," Aberline says earnestly, "I didn't mean to offend you."
The boy sighs exasperatedly, but drops the subject. He gets up off of the sofa and folds the corners of the blanket dragging on the floor back up onto the sofa. His nose wrinkles a little bit when he notices the worn state of the sofa and the blanket that he had been using, but he's been trained in proper etiquette, and so makes no comment.
Aberline has long thrown away the porcelain shards, and he finds himself with a lack of something to do. He has nothing to keep his hands busy. He must keep his hands busy. Or-
He hears the boy's soft, padded footfalls as he approaches the counter. A clink indicates that Ciel has picked up the remaining teacup, and perhaps, taken a drink from it.
"The tea has gone cold," Ciel announces, and he puts the nearly-full teacup back onto the countertop with an air of distaste.
Aberline can't find it in himself to apologize or to even reply. The pretty pretty- the boy is too close, far too close for comfort.
When Aberline does not reply to his comment, Ciel stares at the older man's back, visible blue eye narrowed.
"You've been avoiding my gaze ever since I woke up. What's wrong with you?"
Ciel has always been very perceptive.
"Why won't you look at me?"
"I-" Aberline breaks off, and contemplates lying, but he knows that Ciel would catch him in the act, and he knows that he owes the boy better. "I can't-" the detective's voice fails him again briefly, but finally, he manages to force the entire sentence out of his mouth in a whisper.
"I can't be trusted to do so."
Silence.
"Could it be," the boy begins quietly, a hint of malice seeping into his voice, "that I make you nervous?"
Aberline hears the boy begin inch closer to him, and he's got to run, or if he snaps, he'll push the little Earl back against the countertop and ravage his ruby-red mouth and his pale, graceful little neck-
Despite the fact that Ciel is trying to crowd him, Aberline pushes his way past the boy and makes his way to the sofa in the living room.
The detective sits down, limbs feeling heavy, and he wills himself to not be rash.
God is testing me, he reminds himself, his face in his hands. God is-
"Coward!" Ciel hisses at him from only a few paces away.
God is damning me.
When had Ciel left the kitchen? Why was it that he was suddenly here, within arm's reach of the detective-
Ciel Phantomhive launches himself into the detective's lap, heedless of his injuries. Legs straddling Aberline's, Ciel forces the man's face up.
This can't be happening, Aberline tells himself. I am dreaming. I must be dreaming-
He's forcibly snapped back into reality by the bitter sting of nails digging into his cheeks. A narrowed, cold blue eye and smirking red lips are much too close to his face.
"What were you thinking of, detective? Or rather, who?"
Earl Phantomhive shifts and Aberline tries to break his gaze away from the boy's gloating face, but he finds he cannot and he can't and those eyes-
"Me?"
Aberline's eyes betray is agreement.
Despite being hurt, and despite being physically smaller, it is Ciel who is in control of the situation.
"You..." Ciel begins, and then suddenly, realization dawns in his eyes.
"You fancy yourself in love with me!"
Aberline is horrified.
Ciel only presses closer to the other man.
"Ever since that day, in the parlor- you want this, want me, don't you?"
Nonononono-
Ciel shifts slightly, and Aberline can feel the boy's groin brush up against his stomach. He inhales sharply.
God, lead me not into temptation.
"Why won't you take what it is that you want?"
"I can't-"
"Coward-"
Aberline snaps.
He grabs a fistful of slate grey hair, yanks the boy's head forward, and claims his lips in a harsh, possessive kiss. His other hand grips Ciel's waist with bruising force and brings the boy's hips to rub against his own.
And-
Oh, God.
The boy gasps, and Aberline's tongue pushes itself into that sweet, hot mouth, and he can taste the forbidden fruit-
Forgive me, God.
What we made out of light
The light would not have
So we hollowed out a grave
Where light has forever set
Anthony Burgess
So that's the end of part 2! How was it? Comments/reviews are very much appreciated :).