Retreating to the closest room that was furthest from any activity, I fled up the stair to the master's study, the first door on the right.
The click of the lock granted me permission to issue this keening sound I had been biting back. I leaned against the door, clutching the knob because of some unexplainable need to hold to something. It granted no comfort, and because it could not serve me in this manner, it fuelled an angry frustration, but I did not believe the master would appreciated finding the doorknob to the study wrenched away all because I was having a lapse in composure.
That was what it was, a complete disintegration of my control, rendering me unable to perform my duties. How very shameful. How unacceptable. I wiped the back of my hand against my eyes, stared at the wet on my glove.
I was not supposed to feel this way, but I was. The only logical conclusion I could come to was because my master had willed it, that he commanded his performance "reach me," with all his anger and sadness and passion imbued in every moment of it. Sitting on the couch I pondered this, and remembered that I had done the very same to him. Had I not once before used my own music to dissolve a barrier in him? He used my own trickery against me, the impossible little wretch. How admirable, young master, and I barked a pathetic, sobbing laugh. His song was a genuine confession of his heart, and it had penetrated something that I did not know could even exist, much less be penetrated.
And this made me want him more.
This baffled me more than anything, because before I had done everything to push him away when I felt this sinking feeling, the heaviness in my shoulders and the weakening of my fortitude. I lost track of the time batting these ideas back and forth, trying to understand what emotion led to another and concluded that none of this followed any sort of linear progression, but rather it was an entanglement of illogical feeling. Paradoxically, it all made sense as a whole, that to take any piece of it and examine it singularly resulted in confusion.
To allow myself to feel the fullness of that most complete despair was... enlivening. How glorious, that my master should experience such life, to know it was to know the very contents of his soul. What beauteous pain.
It was growing late. I felt the activity downstairs dwindling, many souls leaving, but some continuing to mill about to play billiards or talk in the smoking lounge. Some were just too soused to leave and some were enjoying their company too much to part ways. My watch read half-past eleven, and it was already well past the master's bedtime.
A call disrupted my thoughts. 'Sebastian... where are you?'
The seal under the glove prickled, and I tried to shake it off with pulling the fringe from my face. His heels clicked up the stairs. I sensed his hesitation from the other side of the door to the study, and from my position on the couch I unlocked the door. He jumped from the disembodied 'click,' knowing there had been no sound of someone within the room moving to disengage the lock.
The knob turned, and I stood to greet his entrance.
"Sebastian, this is where you have been this whole time."
"I hope my absence has not been an inconvenience."
He entered the room, closing the door behind him but continuing to hold to that doorknob. In this stark space with its dim lamps, the dark panelling, its bookshelves lining the walls to insulate the room from outside noise, he appeared as a gilded being displaced from some grander sphere. His typical placid expression did not carry the usual hardness to it and an easy fatigue settled about his shoulders.
"Prepare a bath. I should very much like to retire for the night."
"Very good, sir."
He continued to stare, as if he was seeing me for the first time. Perhaps there was something amiss with my appearance. The only reflective object in my sight was that large blue eye and as I focused at my visage within it, I understood why he looked at me so. It was written over my face, the traces of sorrow.
He took a few tentative steps. "Sebastian... have you...?"
I crouched to the floor in a deep bow, fringe obscuring the evidence of it. "My young lord, I must commend you on a most stunning performance. It was... inspired, truly." He stood before me and then bent down to lift my chin.
"Look at me." Lifting my gaze, my image reflected even clearer in that deep blue. Disbelief and awe resonated from him as he caressed my cheek.
"And might I say, you have never looked more regal than you have this night... my beautiful Young Master." I pulled away his hand to grip within my own.
"Thank you. Thank you for making all of this so perfect."
"You... deserve nothing less."
Something inside him seemed to flicker. 'Oh my Sebastian...'
He cupped his other hand around mine. "I must go to give my well-wishes to a few people."
He really meant it mostly for Joanne. "Are you going to miss him?"
He looked up to the ceiling for a moment as if trying to keep his eyes from spilling over. "He has been... good company."
"I can't help feel you mean a great deal more when you say that."
He pulled away his hands. "Very well, you're right. But... it is time that he return to Weston." He turned to leave. "So let me give my well wishes before I lose the heart to do so, all right?"
As he stomped from the room, I realised he was preparing to say farewell to that strange lad. Joanne could not have a permanent place in his life and Ciel was not going to fool himself in believing that it could be possible. Perhaps he never wanted Joanne as such. Perhaps he understood he could not be permanent for him. That was admirable in and of itself.
Filling the bath tub, setting out fresh towels, procuring night clothes, these were all motions that gave me small comfort and reminded me of my place with my young master who had asked so little of me as of late.
There was much to do in the coming days to clean from the ball. The master would have to write his thank you notes, compile his final figure for the hospital. Elizabeth had intention to stay until Monday morning, and would probably wish to discuss wedding plans. I wondered if Ciel felt he could not have anything permanent with Joanne, then did he feel he had something permanent with Elizabeth?
Ciel's feelings toward her had always been motivated out of obligation. He never described her as "good company." She was cousin, fiancée, family. When had "family" ever been considered "good company?"
When he returned upstairs, he shut the door to the bathroom behind him just as I was adding oils to the water. "I believe everything is to your liking, young master. Do you require anything further?"
Underneath his placid expression hid an unshakable sadness, borne of something deeper than farewells and so longs. Ciel pulled at the strings of his eye patch and it was set on the counter next to the sink. He stalked around me, as if an errant move would have me bolting for safety. At that point I realised this unique pinch of melancholy was his thoughts towards me. It was empathy.
"Yes, Sebastian. Give me your hand." As I did so, he loosened the fastening of the glove, pulled the covering from my fingers one by one, and let it fall to the floor. He cradled my hand in his, laying kisses over the knuckles, his lips tracing over the seal. The chilling, quivering sensation was from more than just the gentle contact. He whispered, "Joanne will be back sometime tomorrow morning to collect his things."
"So he has another engagement for the evening."
"Yes."
"And how do you-"
"I encouraged it."
He pulled my right hand into his and followed the same motions. He brought my naked hands to his face as if to bury his senses in the sensation, breathing deeply of my palms, pecking his lips against the pads of my fingers.
"Young master, what are your intentions?" He would not allow me to pull away my hands, so instead I cupped his face and forced his gaze to mine. "Is this to mask some loneliness? Do you seek to affect me in some way?"
The truth was, he had already affected me. His touch was causing that bitter ache to return to my throat once more and I was reminded of the hollowness all over again. That beautiful, painful song of romance he had played earlier in the evening still wafted through my memories.
"When I found you in my study earlier, your eyes were red. Not in that usual way they go red. I find it unusual. And you complimented me on my playing. You know... I was playing for you." Ciel took a step closer, and I felt his pulse speed under my fingers about his temples. "And until this night I believed there was nothing I could do... I could not make you jealous, and you would not come to me wanting... and I didn't want to command you to come to me when I just want you to do it of your own accord..." His arms were about me, and my chest was in a vice. "And Joanne has told me everything. He would not hide those things from me, Sebastian. You overwhelmed him, he was practically in tears as he told me of how you have denied yourself, when we were both under the impression that you just can't feel these things."
"Master, I do not want to feel these things."
"But you do anyway." His eye was alight with a silent order, or perhaps it was more his wilful resolve. "You felt something when you heard me play. You have been trying to hide it away for a while now, but you know I don't like it when you keep secrets from me."
"So are you angry with me for this?" I grasped the back of his neck, tilting his face upward, tangling my fingers in soft hair that smelled of freesia and hollyhock.
"No, not in the slightest." He pressed against me, an arm locked about my shoulders as he caressed a cheek that was sodden not long ago. "I see it in your face still, this pains you, and of course, my demon who is accustomed to feeling nothing, because when we feel, it hurts. We are all affected in this way."
His eyes filled my hazy vision, and my lip quivered. "Young master... it is wizened men who know these things, and I see even them as babes who have experienced so little of this world, for it is too colossal for just one of your lifetimes. But you..."
"Because men fear, they cower from that which is beyond themselves. I suspect old men have little to fear, just as I do. Sebastian, when have I ever felt fear in your arms? And now, as you are in mine, you are trembling." As those words were spoken, they tickled against my cheeks, as he had pulled himself close, on his toes, and his lips were so very close to mine. His breath smelled of champagne, the honeyed treats I had prepared for the evening. "Sebastian, why are you so afraid?"
"You have stripped me of all devices I might have to control or deceive. Why must I be laid bare? I am powerless before this..." I clutched to him as he felt my only support. "Young master, you are most cunning to have done this. Your playing has improved tremendously, to have bested me so—"
"No." He held a finger to my lips to silence me. "This is not a game. I'm done playing." He traced over my mouth parted in surprise, his nose brushing against mine. "Because now I know what it is you feel, and I refuse to play with your emotions."
His lips felt as neither victory nor surrender, but rather liberation as they caressed against my own. His kiss bore no trifling sweetness, but instead a fullness of himself to be savoured, an open-mouthed, passionate act to capture the whimper from my throat and bequeath to me a feeling of wild exposure. This was no seduction, for his heart chanted the order, 'take me, take this, taste it, I am yours,' with no regard to his own self-defence because he trusted, known beyond any logical explanation, that I absolutely would not destroy this. I simply cared too much.
My senses were awash with him, his body pulsing a steady rhythm, and his desire for us to indulge in each other, for him to feed of me as I of him, to give and receive, a continual reciprocation. He did this not to subdue, to control or to diminish me. The assault of my senses was because of his sheer abandon, and I was overcome once more. He kissed the wetness from my eyes not to prey on this vulnerability, but to cherish it.
"Sebastian..." the sound of the name he gave me forced me to lift him from the floor, for it was more than a permission to possess him, even more than a command. It was the fragments of my shattered being that needed him. He tilted back his head to expose his pale neck, the blood surging just underneath the frail skin. My lips felt the vibration of his moaning as I nipped and sucked at sumptuous flesh.
The ruffles of his collar and this thick cravat were an intolerable hindrance, so I pulled them away. To expose his neck all the more was not enough, and he seemed to agree with this, as he pushed himself away to shove off the velvet jacket. He reached to pull the knot from my tie. This sped our hands, the desperate need to touch uninhibited. His slender chest collided with my own, sleeves and vests and jackets about us on the tiles. He grasped at my shoulders, trailing over my arms and he caught my lips once more in hunger.
It mattered little to me that my head felt it was spinning, for I lifted him and his legs twisted about my waist. He gasped over my tongue that slid between his lips as the stiffness between his legs met with my own hardening length. As he jerked his hips against mine, I felt that sensation pooling at the root of me. I clutched at the frustrating fabric of his breeches as he panted at my neck, "I want you Sebastian, I want you, so much it hurts..."
I pressed him between the wall and my chest to reach behind me and pull the shoes from his feet. They clapped against the tiles. I kicked off my shoes, and grasping under his thighs rutted against him and he gasped. He wanted more than just this body, more than my skilled touches and the ecstatic sensations. He wanted to share in filling this hunger ache we had for each other, and I thought it impossible how anyone would crave me, but his mind sang of all the wonder he felt for me, his demon. There was a great strength in knowing I could belong to something, especially this master, my sensational little lord who was beyond exceptional.
His voice was husky as he ordered, "Take these off," but it was not so much of an order but rather a plea to feel nothing but skin against his own. He pushed away to touch onto the floor, pulling at the waist band as I wrenched my fly open, and he gripped at my straining erection before the trousers had fallen to the floor. I moaned into his hair as his teeth scraped against my chest, his hands coaxing such pleasure from me. Soon he was freed from the last of his garments, willowy limbs and his plump rear cupped in my palms.
"Get in the bath."
I eased into the slant of the tub, the water a pleasurable heat and I was drowned in a scent of lavender. Ciel slipped in afterwards, water sloshing over the sides to soak cotton and silk, wool and velvet that littered the tiled floor. None of it mattered to me, for I was focused on how he straddled over my lap and I buried my nose under his arm, finding the boyish scent of him preferable to the oil I had added to the bath. His body was just on the edge of maturity, the growth under his arms, and the thickening of his muscles, but there still lingered the softness of youth, a rare and fleeting state of being for a person. There were even minute changes in his physique from when I last felt him. To rove over his back, feel his legs shift on either side of me, my teeth to graze over the buds of his chest, it was all rediscovery.
His hands cupped water to lap over my arms, my shoulders. "Let me wash you."
"Pardon, master?"
"Did I stutter?" He reached for a small pitcher situated over the edge of the tub. "Tilt your head back." As I did so, he poured water over the crown of my head, taking care not to let it run into my face, but I would not have minded if he had been clumsy because it was his attention he was giving to me. He seemed to enjoy lathering my hair as well, the sensation of massaging my scalp as pleasurable to him as it was to me. What was I to do with this affection, other than to accept it? This one instance of granting me this service felt significant, and I could not stop kissing my gratitude for a boy who believed I was worth being pampered.
As he lathered soap onto a wash cloth, he took my hand, and proceeded to scrub, which was all very unnecessary but no less pleasurable. "You know, when I was younger, I wondered if it could be washed off," he said, running the cloth over the back of my hand with its infernal symbols. "But I have read the books about people in primitive areas, and the plates that illustrate the strange markings they put on their bodies. They prick the skin with needles and work ink into it so it can never wash out. Is that what this seal is, Sebastian?"
"It is not as permanent as all that." He travelled with the cloth between my fingers, then over my palms and up my wrist to scrub my arm in a slow circular motion. This was all in mimicry of how I used to wash him, and I had never considered he had ever paid such close attention. "It is not as a wound that heals and leaves a mark. You know injury never leaves a trace on me. The seal is held to the skin by the force of our contract."
"So... magic."
"In simple terms, I suppose."
He reached my shoulder with the cloth and leaned in closer. His prick grazed against mine and he kissed a sigh from my lips. "Mmm... it was right painful to have this mark put on my eye. You should know, I have not seen out of it since."
"Of course, it is a cursed mark. To place it upon you caused injury." I reached below the water to rub my length against his own. "It is a mystery to me, young master, how you could ever want me to touch you."
"There's no mystery to it, ah, Sebastian..." he attempted to continue washing my shoulders, but was losing focus to how his hips rocked over me. "So your first touches were harsh. That is not how you touch me now— by Hell, ah, I love it when you touch me."
He poured water from the pitcher over my shoulders to rinse away the suds then laid kisses across them, the act of washing forgotten. Stroking in steady rhythm, the water sloshed over the rim as I rolled my hips under him, the heat of his young cock against mine. I tilted back my head as he bit at my neck, urging my grip. As he ran his fingers over my slick hair he murmured, "Sebastian, you're wonderful. Your body, and what you do to me, it's all perfect."
I moved to lap at his chest, trailing my tongue over slick flesh. When I sucked at his nipple he bucked, pushing himself against me, his hands on the back of my neck. My own pleasure was rising, my senses inundated with his heat, his breath, his touch, and a small thought entered my head, that I would lose myself in my master on this night. I was at his mercy anyway, trembling to explore him again, all sense of myself lost in the wake of this new revelation, that this was far beyond finding gratification in flesh.
"Sebastian, you have been so quiet. Tell me... tell me how you want me."
He gazed into my eyes as we laced our fingers, bodies flush. "I intend to suck at every inch of you." I nipped at his jaw. "I want every wave of pleasure to crest higher than the last, because when your body is alight with ecstasy, your soul sings with it as well." He jerked harder on my cock and my legs trembled under him. "Do you know I can almost taste it right now? When I finally bury myself in you I will feel it with every one of my senses, all those jagged parts like tinkling glass, and a scent like the choicest brandy and a symphony that can make a devil like me weep." He moaned at these words, moaned at how my teeth grazed over his nipples and my nails pricked at his sides. "In that small, brilliant moment when you peak I can taste the entirety of you, like a single drop of your ambrosia. If this should be the way I am to consume you, and I go mad for it, then so be it."
"Are you mad for me?"
"I am ravenous."
"The feeling is mutual." He sloshed from the bath, his thin torso dripping, and padded to where I had set fresh towels. "Get out. Come to bed with me."
He dried himself in haste, and proceeded to pat me down with a thick towel, ruffling the dampness from my hair, not leaving a single part of me unattended. I gazed at him as he crouched below me, rubbing at my legs and he chuckled, "Heh, your feet, I just can't get over them." He stared at the black nails of my toes.
As he lowered his face I baulked. "No, young master." I took a step back. "You give too much of yourself. Do not lower yourself before me..." He was never meant to crouch and kiss at my feet in adoration, as it should have been the other way around. "Do not toss aside your dignity."
"My dignity?" He held to my knees and forced that I take this gracious gesture, his back bent and the brand still an offensive mar on his pink skin. "This dignity is an illusion. Don't indulge me with lies, and don't tell me what to do."
I lowered myself onto my knees, grasping at his shoulders. "I implore you, please raise your head. I am your servant. Young master, I am not worth—"
"But you're wrong. You are more, you have always been more."
"You grant me too much."
"And out of everyone I should ever know, you deserve my favour the most." He rose from the floor, pulling at my arms along with him. "Where would I be without you? Who would I have become without your influence? What would my life look like if you were not in it?"
The answer to all those questions was that there would be no Ciel Phantomhive. On the other hand, there would have been nothing of me as well. I would not have had any reason to exist as Sebastian Michaelis, and I would have continued existing in some infernal realm none the wiser to this privileged, gilded life, wrought with a plethora of new sensations, new challenges and curiosities, a multitude of experience to be had in only five short years. It was a blink in my perception of time but never could I have imagined a moment more vibrant.
At the crux of it all was this boy, my contractor, beyond my conception of what the choicest soul could be. I could lay with him over and over to rediscover him anew, for ages on end watch him grow and change. I could lift him to even higher status, be witness to the increase of his power and influence. What would maturity do for this soul? In how many ways could Ciel be further refined? The potential was staggering.
"My dearest little master, I could ask those same questions." I guided him through the second door in the bathroom, the one that led directly to his bedroom. Glancing at the grate of the fireplace, a fire sprang where there was once a cold hearth. Ciel glared at me, for I knew better than to perform my tasks in such a manner, but I smirked. "No sense in dirtying myself after the master has gone through such effort to bathe me."
He smiled. "It was a poor effort."
"Nonsense."
"You lie again."
"Any effort you make in my favour will never be poor to me." I eased him onto the bed, his legs splayed for me to rest between them, arms out to receive me, and he took the weight of me over him. Kisses were granted to the palms of his hands, into the crook of his elbows, under his arms and over his sides. His back arched as I licked down his belly, into his navel, clutching his hips and inhaling the heady musk to overpower soft lavender. I buried my nose into the soft pubis at the base of swollen organ, his desire acute and he panted, "Yes, take it, every inch."
How I lapped at the head, purpled and straining. My cheeks hollowed to take in all of it, his hands on the back of my head to plead this consumption, for we were both greedy. The essence of him was fresh, thick with abandonment, that nectar of that which poets sing. As I sucked, pulling up with pursed lips his legs widened, knees bending in shameless exhibition. He pulled at my hand on his leg, lacing fingers with my own, kissing at every nail, his breath gracing my palm as I descended again. He mimicked my sucking, his mouth closing over a finger and his wet tongue laving over and around and between.
What he wanted was apparent to me, and I abandoned his cock to lower regions, my tongue flicking over his sack, flesh softer than satin, not entirely matured but the inexorable drive of manhood was present. Tracing lower, I prodded at the entrance and he released my hand. With a sigh the muscles softened around my finger wet from his mouth.
"I can only go so far."
"The oil is in the bedside cabinet." Without hesitation I retrieved it.
"You have exhausted quite a bit of this," I commented, holding it to the light.
"Don't tease."
"Perhaps I am a little impressed, is all." I crouched once more before him, his feet on the edge of the bed. "May you never cease to impress me." Slicked fingers massaged about that tightness, spiralling to the centre. I wanted to see his expression as I opened him. I whispered against his lips, "Sigh into me when I kiss you." He exhaled into my open mouth, and I felt him easing, tenseness fading, and it took a slight prod before a finger sank into him. His breath hitched and I shushed him, "Just breathe."
He pulled the breath from my lungs and returned it, a slow syncopation where the rushing of air filled my hearing, back and forth. I used this rhythm to gauge every moment of preparedness, when to thicken the intrusion. Each exhalation was coupled with a purring moan that hummed through my chest. He curled under me, raising his backside higher to permit me to reach deeper.
"Sebastian... do you like... my body?"
I paused. "Certainly. What has brought on this?"
His eyes darted away from mine. "I've often wondered. I don't consider myself much to look at. I'm no specimen of manhood, not like..."
As I sank my fingers deeper his eyes shot open, and I captured his surprise with a roving tongue. When I flexed within him he mewled, jerking in the hopes I would prod at that deep place again. "You mean to say, 'not like me,' is that right, young master? Should I tell you all the ways I enjoy you?" He nodded.
More oil and another finger was introduced, and in response he deepened his breathing. His legs trembled, cock twitched, and he did not pull away from this deep penetration. "Your lips are small, yet full, and I like your taste. Your skin is soft, and all this fine hair is quite soft too. Even though your arms are thin I can feel the strength in how you hold to me tightly. I like how you call to me. I so enjoy the sounds you make." I pushed in to my knuckles and he bucked under me. "Right there, how you are so responsive. I will never tire of how my touch affects you so. You should not aspire to make yourself into anything your body is not meant to be. And I like your smallness, how so much of you fits into my hands. I have never enjoyed a body quite like yours, and the uniqueness of this is something of a novelty for me."
"What if I should grow any larger?"
"Then I will enjoy you all the same."
He was dilated beyond what was necessary to accommodate me, but he seemed entranced by my steady rhythm. Everything smelled of sex and his chest shone with. "Young master, I have been waiting for you to beg to be ravished."
"I've been waiting for you to just do it of your own accord." His eyes were closed, and he sighed when my hand slipped from his backside. In one stroke I slicked my still-hard length with oil. He seemed so pliable under me. I raised one of his legs, poised before him, considering that once I entered he would not be able to stop me, and I hoped he would not wish it.
Pushing in was so easy and I was assaulted by the immediate warmth of it. "Ah! Master!" Grasping his hips I thrust the full length of myself into him. He arched in immediate response to being filled, an uninhibited throaty wail. Each thrust tore at me in sizzling desire, and I became aware at how I gulped at the air. Ciel grasped at my thighs, his feet on my shoulders as I wrapped about his legs. Lifting that backside to press those cheeks together, my hips circled as if to wind him tighter and tighter.
This wild, feral stimulation, how I could feel such life dancing within him, strumming about me, the sensations shooting through me as a lightning rod, the thump of his heart and the flexing of his muscles and the rush of blood, all in a complex rhythm.
He reached for me, "Sebastian, I need to feel more of you," and so I bent over him, knees under him on the bed, my arms scooping around him to lift him onto me. He rocked over me, and he smirked when he saw me grit my teeth at how he scooped his hips, this dizzying motion that pushed at every part of me inside of him. His finger twitched over my shoulders as I gripped him, tugging those slender thighs and rolling my forehead over his chest.
"Ah, you have driven me mad, my beautiful master..."
He stopped.
"There's something I want you to do."
It was strange for him to preface any sort of command. He licked his lips, as though to encourage the words to slip from him. I held him closer to my chest, hoping perhaps this would encourage him to speed this order. I could not bear this stillness.
As he cupped my face, his eye glowed, and I knew this would be an order I could not refuse.
"Call to me by my name."
His name, his given name, not as master, but as how I perceived him in silence, within the thoughts that I never uttered, a manner in which I never addressed him. Until this point, no matter the circumstances, I could have that verification that I was still a servant, that all this was in service to him, not myself, no matter what amount of pleasure I derived from it.
"Do it, Sebastian." His bucking continued at a teasing pace. "I want to hear you say it."
He was commanding me to toss aside this final barrier.
"Call to me like a lover would, in desperation. Plead my name." The seal was scorching, the link between us felt as taut as violin string, and the air seemed to hum with this connection.
He wanted expression of a truth I had withheld from him always, something even I was afraid to admit to, because I knew what it had the potential to shatter. But this is what he wanted, and I was beyond denying it.
I eased him onto the bed, pumping a rhythm in and out of him that matched my shuddering breath, the gentle caress of his thighs around me. This was why my heart ached when he touched me like this, why my vision tunnelled, but I took a deep breath and pushed against him.
When spoken with intent, words will create and destroy. There was some faint and distant past I could recall, when gracious words made mountains tremble, forced fire to rain from the heavens, and brought the kings of ancient places to their knees. It was with this mighty voice, funnelled into but a whisper that I made such declaration. "Oh Ciel..."
Some deep chord was struck within him, awash with brilliant haze and he cried, "Again!"
I kissed at his sweating temple, traced over his mouth open in wonder. "My Ciel..." I spoke it with some ancient power I had once known, the clarion that was once reserved for messages of glory. I spoke his name with glory.
"Yes, Sebastian, tell me I belong to you!"
"Ciel, you are my everything..." which was true, because for five years I had invested in him, five years of pampering, grooming, educating, tailoring him to fit within a vicious society. I could prepare him in all ways but never in all my ages could I ever anticipate that he would mould me into something that could suit him, something beyond the confines of servitude, something beyond the damning limitations of being a devil.
I thought to the moment when I had seen Ciel with Joanne, and recognised that I was playing out that very same scenario, with Ciel's vulnerabilities cradled, and his feelings exalted. And so I took him with such tenderness, speaking his name over and over as if it were a litany, with every thrust, every whisper that brushed against his ear he gasped, howled, clung to me. He held to my face, my shoulders, desperate pawing to leave no part of me untouched. Everything about this tingled, which soon turned to sharp heat that seemed to scald from within. I felt it could burn me alive, but I did not care how it would compromise me. I was beyond caring because the sight of Ciel's flushed face and strained expression meant he was so close to falling to pieces...
And I wanted to fall with him.
I sped my pace, slapping against those hips, and he too was panting. I reached between us to fist around his erection and he yelped, moaning kisses against my lips. His heart sped, his nerves prickling with a thousand sensations, but his soul echoed one thought, me, forever me and nothing else, for in his mind it was ready to be given regardless of condition of payment.
Something crackled within, some eruptive force that could pull the wind from me, wring me of all power. For the tiniest fraction I knew his bliss, like some ether resting between the particles of air, and the next a terrible bereavement. My eyes clenched tight as I howled against him, spent with brutal force for I felt as though something more fundamental to my being was being wrenched from me, but I held to him, held to my Ciel as he collapsed into orgasm with me.
Like a storm that had blown over us, stillness followed, and the first thing I felt was the hunger, a terrible, vacuous hunger.
And something else felt quite hollow about this situation, as I looked at Ciel under me. There was a chilling silence to his presence. I checked that indeed he was breathing, and there was a steady pulse... but I could not feel it, not as I should have. There was not the typical hum that resonated through me, no stream of thought for me to tap into, just a jarring silence.
As he steadied himself... he opened his eyes. "Sebastian..." and the sight of them forced me stumbling off the bed.
For his left was as normal as it had always been, but it was the right...
A ghostly, milky blue occupied his eye, not the violet that should have been there. The pentagram I had once etched into his eye was gone, and all that was left was a blank, unseeing eye, with no power to command at all.
My left hand was just as barren.
This was why everything felt so still. The contract was gone, null and void, for something between us had severed it.
He noticed my panic, and my blank hand. "Where is it?" He pushed off the bed to look into the mirror to confirm his anxious fear. "It's gone..." he whispered to his reflection. He turned to face me. "Sebastian, what happened?!" he bellowed, and came running to me. There were signs of panic and distress, but I could not feel them as I was accustomed, for his emotions did not quake within me.
It was so empty, only my hunger to fill my senses and I hung my hand over my mouth. "The contract is broken." I murmured. My vision was red. No longer chained, it felt like a weight was in free fall inside of me, and it was pulling away some thin veneer. I took a breath to try and hold it together.
Ciel's panic was not helping with this. "How can that be?" He clutched at my arms, and the contact alone just stirred this hunger even further.
I pinned him to the bed, for all I could think was how this was prey, a banquet free for the taking. "Ciel, you broke the contract. You cared no longer to be driven by your bitter feelings and focused on revenge." His soul was still available, unchanged, it was right there. "You found something else to drive you. Something you wanted from me, a role I was never made to fulfil. I am no longer your servant. You cannot command me, and you cannot control me. And I cannot protect you."
I had known this was a possibility from the start, from the first time he was in my bed, when he encouraged me to not hold back, when I withheld the very thing he wanted from me. This was why I did not ever wish to feel this, because I felt destitute in the face of it all. This was the result of his love, its most perfect, gentle presence dissolving the malignity of our contract, for it left no space for its evil to dwell.
And there was no sense in me being there either.
He quivered under me, whether from terror or panic or disbelief I knew not. Despite whatever distress he might have been feeling, he mustered his most resolved tone. "But can you love me?"
Was this one final act of self-preservation? This boy was mad, foolish in thinking that there was anything at all that could keep this hunger at bay. But I thought of how moments earlier I was overcome with him, that I freely catered to his requests, that they were not commands but I had wanted to feel him in every way imaginable.
And I sat over him pondering all these things and realised I was stalling in consuming him, even if my hunger clouded all these truths that were so clear to me moments earlier. The fact that I could overcome this fundamental need to stamp out his life and watch him wither in front of me... was that not significant? That I was even contemplating this foolish boy's questions had to mean something.
Why did I care so much? What was I truly caring for in the first place? It was not the contract that I cared about, because Ciel did not need a contract to relinquish his soul because in his mind it was already mine to have. What I cared for... was a boy who very well knew he had been stripped of all power, but he lay before me, staring into my red eyes willing himself to not show fear and there was no price that could be placed on someone who was so impossibly exceptional.
I reclined in the bed, laying his head on my chest. I should have felt empty and defeated, but there was a sullen sort of peace about having his legs tangled in mine, arms curled about his waist and his hair rumpled under my chin. I kissed the top of his head. "You know devils have no reason to ever fall in love."
He chuckled. "Much like how they have no reason to cry."
"Precisely."
He kissed me before I could give another lie.
"Sebastian, you promised to never leave. Will you break your promise?"
Oblivion would have felt appropriate in that moment. We could cease and the dawn would never come. Drowning in each other seemed much more preferable to lies and masks.
"If you wish for me to break my promise, I would for you."
"No, I'd prefer you keep it."
"Very well."
Would this mean I was still in some employment? Or instead was I a companion, an equal to him? The only thing that bound me to him was my willingness to stay. I was uncertain of how long I could manage that. Perhaps it would be best to determine these things in the morning, I thought.
Ciel seemed content to drift into sleep in my arms. This child was truly insane, to lower his guard to his most immediate threat. That was part of his charm, I supposed. Sleep did seem the best option, as unconsciousness meant I would not have to suffer my hunger for a time. Ciel's weight and heat were of some comfort. I focused on the rise and fall of his chest as I clutched at him, trying to blanket myself in something of his essence. It would have to be enough.
Our peace was ruptured by a mortified scream.
Ciel jerked awake, and I held him tight to me as I stared at who had shown up in the doorway.
Elizabeth stared right back, clutching the door frame.