A/N: It's been a slow week and I haven't had anything better to do than write. Don't judge me.

In the weeks since Alois' funeral, the change in their relationship had become stable and constant. They maintained a polite, civil manner in front of others, and soon it was only when they were together that Ciel felt he could be himself. He could express his hatred for the system without his parents looking at him with concern, he could vent about the world's many injustices and Sebastian seemed to thirst for his anger rather than try to repress it.

After the rest of the house retired, Sebastian would sometimes return to his room. He would never admit it to the butler but he always waited up in case he heard the single, soft rap at his door. Almost two months after Alois passed away that familiar sound made his heart skip. He whispered for Sebastian to come in, though he never understood how he heard him. A moment later Sebastian slipped into the room and joined him on the bed. He sat on the edge and observed Ciel, who was sitting up against the headboard.

"It's been awhile," Ciel said, trying to sound flippant.

"Indeed. I have had to spend much of my time in your father's company."

Ciel wanted to ask details but he knew it was a waste of breath. He toyed with the idea of admitting that he had missed Sebastian's visits but thought better of it. He wanted to seem interested but not dependent. They had only seen each other in passing and, with only a couple feet between them, he was reminded how delicious Sebastian smelled. He inhaled deeply and closed his eyes.

"Master," he heard Sebastian whisper, and then he was being kissed.

He gasped but melted in an instant. Sebastian always kissed him goodnight after he sneaked a visit, a soft brushing of their lips together. This was nothing like that. It was passionate and fierce, and consumed Ciel just as their first one did. He rose onto his knees and pushed Sebastian onto his back. In the moon's glow his butler's raven colored hair fanned out on the bed and his skin seemed to be made of the moonlight itself. He straddled Sebastian's waist and joined their lips once more.

Sebastian always led, but somehow he knew exactly what to do. His face grew hot as his tongue tangled with Sebastian's...he must be doing a good job if the hardness he could feel pressed against his leg was any indication. In a sudden rush of confidence he reached down and palmed the erection straining against the butler's slacks. Sebastian growled into the kiss and Ciel moved his hand around experimentally. His fingers trembled as he unfastened his pants and worked them down.

Sebastian watched him with hunger as his lower body was exposed, and Ciel met his eyes as he wrapped his fingers around Sebastian's bare flesh. He had no idea what felt good but everything he was doing seemed to be driving Sebastian mad. When he decided they would do more than kiss tonight, he didn't know either but nothing between them ever seemed to go as planned. He tried to find a rhythm as he moved his hand up and down Sebastian's sizable (terrifying) arousal.

"I...I want you."

He paused to look back to Sebastian who was silent at first. His eyes were the brightest red he'd ever seen them, and there was no denying his pupils were slitted. Ciel slowly began to move his hand again. There was very little he was afraid of and Sebastian was not among those things.

He was debating if he should repeat himself when Sebastian said, "Are you quite sure you're ready for me?"

Ciel scoffed. "That sounds like a challenge."

Sebastian sat up and reversed their positions. His cock pressed against Ciel's stomach, which was left exposed by his shirt riding up about his waist. He arched into the feeling and kissed Sebastian again. In truth, he wasn't sure, but he didn't know how he could be when he'd never done anything like this. He was sure that it was wrong but so were many things and there was never a stop put to those. If life had taught him anything it was that you had to take what you wanted, it wouldn't be handed to you. And he wanted Sebastian.

He had to turn and bite down on the sheets to stifle his moans when Sebastian began to touch him in the same way he had been touching Sebastian, with much more skill and purpose. Ciel's whole body seemed to be on fire. He felt like his heart was going to explode if it beat any faster and everything below his waist was as tight as the strings on Sebastian's violin. Sebastian played his body with equal dexterity.

"Seb-Sebastian!" he cried, shaking too hard to control it any longer. "I don't know what's happening.."

There was a growl in his ear that was unlike anything he'd ever heard from a human being. It seemed not to come only from his butler from every corner of the room. His eye shot open as the tension in his body rapidly became more than he could stand. He then saw Sebastian's face in the room's silver light. His eyes gave off a light of their very own, and the teeth that showed between his parted lips were sharper than they had been just moments ago. There was a strange shadow behind him that seemed to be moving of its own accord. He gasped, bewildered and sure his eye was playing tricks on him though he knew this wasn't the case.

Sebastian's eyes darkened as he realized what Ciel was seeing. He lurched to his feet even as Ciel reached out. Ciel's fingers closed on empty air, and he found himself alone. There was a wetness on his ear and when he wiped it away, his fingers came back with a faint smear of blood. He stared at the still closed door. It felt like a hundred questions had just been answered but left a thousand more in their place.

(((())))

He didn't see much of Sebastian after that night. The butler stayed close to his parents, and after a week of late nights Ciel stopped waiting up for him. He started spending most of his free time in the manor's library, pouring over everything from fiction to medical journals, determined to find a logical way to explain Sebastian. This also kept him from thinking too much of what had almost happened before Sebastian fled. He had not only tried to give his body to a man, but one who was much older and who he knew very little about. Well, he was going to know more. It didn't have to come from Sebastian's mouth for him to learn the truth.

He took advantage of the distance between them. Without his peculiar relationship with the butler to distract him he could put all his effort into uncovering the manor's secrets. He began slipping seemingly innocent questions into conversations with his parents in hopes they would say something useful, but they were tight lipped and he discovered the same of the servants. They were respectful and loyal but every bit as secretive as his new family. He assumed that, like Sebastian, they were under orders to keep their mouths shut.

In the process of trying to gain information he let his parents past his defenses. He couldn't say exactly when the change took place, but walks around the grounds with his father turned into Vincent reading him stories before bed, Rachel fussing over his clothes became less of a habit than a gesture of affection, and before he knew it there were people in the world he cared about other than himself. Soon he had no choice but to accept he loved them.

"Are you sure you want me to read you something so dark?" Vincent asked one night, holding up the book of poetry Ciel had given him.

Ciel snuggled into his father's shoulder and nodded. "I find myself better equipped to appreciate the light that way."

"Spoken like my son if I ever had one." The words brought about a now familiar warmth in Ciel's chest. He closed his eye and let his father's voice envelop him like a blanket, as it offered every bit as much comfort. "Take this kiss upon the brow! And, in parting from you now, thus much let me avow – You are not wrong, who deem that my days have been a dream..."

His father's voice seemed to get further and further away. Every now and then the words he spoke were clear but they were quickly becoming a fading lullaby. Sleep claimed Ciel and his father's voice accompanied him into his dreams. It seemed to ward off his nightmares; the faces of his torturers did not appear, nor did the brand on his ribs wake him with searing, phantom pain. He dreamed of a life where he was raised by the Phantomhives, growing up knowing a parent's love.

In his dream Sebastian took the form of a massive crow perched on Vincent's shoulder. The longer he was asleep, the harder the crow's talons seemed to dig in, and Ciel began to toss and turn as they drew a steady trickle of blood from his father's chest. Vincent's shirt seemed to evaporate wherever the blood touched it. He was reaching for Ciel as his bare skin was revealed, face tormented as he said, "Oh God can I not save one from the pitiless wave? Is all that we see or seem-"

"But a dream within a dream?" Ciel finished, stretching desperately to take his father's hand, only to fall backward when a glowing pentagram was revealed on Vincent's bare chest. The crow screeched but it sounded wrong...it was too loud.

Ciel sat bolt upright, pouring cold sweat, just before the next gunshot rang out. He tripped over the sheets as he scrambled out of bed. He groped blindly in the darkness for the cane his parents had gotten him. There was another flash outside the window. He leaned on the gilded handle of the cane, eye transfixed outside. Another flash illuminated two figures on the front lawn, one distinctly female and the other a small male.

"Mey-Rin? Finnian?" he wondered aloud, and yanked a pair of trousers on before running out of the room.

He had just hit the floor of the main hall when strong hands seized him and lifted him. One of the windows at the front of the house shattered in tandem with another gunshot, and he could only duck as Sebastian ran out of the house so fast his feet seemed not to touch the ground. The humid air was suffocating. He called out for Vincent and Rachel, but in the darkness he could only see the manor disappearing from view.

"Take me back to my parents!" he cried, trying to wrestle his way out of Sebastian's arms.

"They are safe, let the servants protect the manor," he said, unfazed by Ciel's efforts.

"What's going on?" Ciel demanded.

He didn't get an answer until they had traveled a long way through the woods. They emerged somewhere on the road that led up to the manor. Ciel swayed when Sebastian sat him on his feet at last. They stood at the edge of a cliff overlooking infinite forest. Ciel looked back at the woods they had just come from, and though he clutched his cane, he sunk to his knees on the damp rock.

"They were looking for you, my lord," Sebastian said.

Ciel was sure his heart had stopped beating, and wasn't sure it would start again. "How do you know that?"

There was a long pause before Sebastian said, "Because they burned down the orphanage before they came here."