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“Keep your soul safe, at least.”
That was the advice of Ciel’s Undertaker, but Ciel already watched his soul closely and guarded it well. Every night, hungry lips paused tantalizing inches from Ciel’s own. A deep, sensual voice whispered in Ciel’s ear:
“Will that be all tonight, my lord?”
And, because Ciel guarded his soul so carefully, he cast those taunting lips and haunting words aside with disdain.
“Disgusting demon,” Ciel would hiss when – as was increasingly the case – they got too close for comfort.
Ciel hadn’t even realized how dependent he had become on Sebastian’s presence until they were forced to separate. It wasn’t that Ciel couldn’t dress himself or prepare his own meals (although he couldn’t). It wasn’t even that he couldn’t put on a false smile and lie his way into the confidences of another (as Freckles, Doll, whatever proved admirably).
Rather, there was something missing when Ciel stood on his own. It was an unnerving, disquieting sensation, much like what it would have been like for Ciel to venture outside on a sunny day only to discover that his shadow was missing. Eerie. Unnatural.
Not vital, Ciel told himself. Never vital.
He was, he conceded, becoming as good at lying to himself as he was to others.
Whatever Ciel and Sebastian were, Ciel never let himself fall into the trap of trusting Sebastian. This was, perhaps, the hardest part of all.
Every time Sebastian dove in at the last minute to save Ciel (and pressed so close and warm around him, on top of him, between his thighs, as they hid in that trunk from certain discovery), another tiny grain of trust sprouted within Ciel.
And every time Sebastian turned his back on Ciel with amused disregard (poisonous snakes, honestly!), that grain of trust was nipped in the bud by an icy chill once more.
Never – Ciel concluded fully aware of his own human arrogance – had two people (to use the term loosely) put so much effort into being untrustworthy to each other, yet implicitly trusted each other more.
When Ciel had been young, he had had a family that loved him, cared for him, and devoted themselves to his happiness and well-being. With the delusion of a fever-induced haze, Ciel opened his eyes now and saw that love and devotion in a demon’s eyes. Later, when Ciel was cogent once more, he would know this for a lie, but for those hours in his sickbed, it was a wonderful, horrible truth.
“Sebastian?” Ciel whispered raggedly.
“Sleep, young master,” Sebastian said blandly.
A cool hand pressed against Ciel’s forehead, stained black at the nails and the contract burned into the back. Such a thing should have roiled Ciel’s stomach, but he leaned into the touch instead.
“Don’t leave…”
Sebastian’s lips curved into a ravenous smile. “Of course not.”
The prospect of being so eagerly devoured alive shouldn’t have been comforting.
It was.
Ciel didn’t care much what made demons demonic and people human. Sometimes he wondered what Sebastian must be capable of to merit such a monstrous title, while Ciel himself retained that title of false purity.
“Burn them all,” Ciel still whispered to himself as the two of them walked through the flames of Lord Kelvin’s estate.
Fire and blood – it was all cleansing, in a way. It reminded Ciel all too much of that day three years ago, when he’d first accepted this shadow inside him. The blood had been balm to Ciel’s soul that day. Now, though, Ciel thought he might enjoy the fires of Hell just as much…
The burst of cool air as they emerged into the night was almost painful: a reminder that the world still turned, Ciel still breathed, and those that Ciel would revenge himself upon still walked the earth.
Doll was there, too. Doll was insignificant. Another human could not touch Ciel, not now that he’d been cleansed by blood and flames, alike. Instead, Ciel cleaved to the chest of the demon holding him like the child he wasn’t (was).
“Sebastian.” Ciel shut his eyes and pressed himself deeper into the vessel of his own ruin.
Doll let out a final gasp of death and fell to the ground. Her cry was sweet.
Behind them, the children burned alive.
Ciel found himself quite content with out-demoning a demon, from time to time.
Sebastian sat himself stiffly, properly, across from Ciel in the train car. He didn’t look like a demon who had just murdered dozens of innocents at all. But then, Ciel didn’t look like a murderer, either. They were both very good at lying through appearances.
Ciel licked his fingers and reveled in his arrogance. Since his illness, Sebastian had been affecting a more attentive persona, which Ciel reviled openly but inwardly found disturbingly comforting. “Who am I to determine who lives and who dies?” Ciel asked rhetorically, tasting the sharp tang of citrus upon his fingertips.
Sebastian avidly watched Ciel’s tongue flick out to touch his hand, over and over.
“I am alive,” Ciel concluded.
Sebastian handed Ciel another slice of orange. Ciel bit into it and let the flavor explode upon his tongue. Sebastian watched Ciel savor it like Sebastian was a starving man. Or, quite literally, a starving demon.
Ciel didn’t know whether it was madness or sanity that overcame him on the ruined grounds of the Renbourn Workhouse.
“Humans are fools, don’t you think, Sebastian?” Ciel laughed at the sight of so great a cause that the circus had thrown their lives away so easily. So great a lie…
“Such things matter little to a demon like me,” Sebastian smiled pleasantly.
“It doesn’t add a little extra spice, then?” Ciel was almost disappointed. “The futility of it all?”
Sebastian’s smile turned several degrees more wicked. “The spice,” he informed Ciel, “comes from pleasure and suffering. From pain received and doled out. From the twisted justifications that allow a soul to retain its inner purity, while surrounding itself with the disease and rot of the human experience.”
Ciel smiled to himself as he surveyed the wreckage. “You seem hungrier of late.”
“If you will permit the liberty, so do you, young master,” Sebastian retorted graciously.
Ciel grinned at him. “Would you like a taste?” Ciel fluttered his eyelashes coyly. “A sample to hold you over?”
Sebastian couldn’t repress a small groan at the thought.
Smirking, Ciel caught Sebastian by the waistcoat and pulled him closer. “Just a bite,” he teased.
Sebastian’s breath was hot and fetid against the fresh citrus that still stung Ciel’s lips. “My lord…” Sebastian purred.
Sebastian’s lips were fire and waste, death and ruin. Ciel had known of the physical part (had had the physical part thrust upon him in nightmares past), and Sebastian’s touch in that regard was not displeasing. Ciel was not surprised by that much.
Neither was Ciel surprised when Sebastian’s insatiable hunger took him over, sunk demon claws (or nails only, Ciel would discover upon inspection of the scratches later) into Ciel’s soft hide, a silver, slippery tongue between Ciel’s lips, a thick, heavy arousal against Ciel’s thigh.
What did surprise Ciel was the feeling inside. It was nothing that could be placed. It was everywhere and nowhere, but so clearly deep inside Ciel that instinctive panic welled up within Ciel’s mind, the way one would upon looking down at themselves to discover that worms were writhing under their skin all over. Pervading him.
Ciel would have laughed at the notion that there was any purity left in his soul, until he felt Sebastian touch him there. The revolting, rotting thing that Sebastian truly was rubbed up against Ciel, coiled around him, and then once – slowly – licked.
Fundamental terror and disgust and madness rushed through Ciel all at once. He screamed against Sebastian’s mouth, and he struggled.
And he came.
With a blissful sigh, Sebastian came against Ciel’s still-clothed thigh, as well.
Afterward, Ciel took a deliberate step back, keeping Sebastian safely at arm’s distance once more. “I didn’t think you for a messy eater,” he scolded.
Sebastian laughed as hard as Ciel had earlier.
Ciel did, too.
Ciel watched his soul closely and guarded it well. His soul was in the perfect care of a ravenous demon, who would devour it whole when the time came. Ciel’s soul would be judged by neither Heaven nor Hell. Ciel’s soul would never be reaped. Rather, Ciel’s soul would suffer the dual torments of being obliterated from existence and spending all of eternity inside Ciel’s own personal demon.
It was an arrangement Ciel found most soothing.