Archive of Our Own

Chapter Text

No one believed him when he spoke of the people in the mirrors. 

So why would they be inclined to believe him about the figure that visited his bedroom every night; a frightening visage, shadow-shrouded and gnarled. Not quite human. Not quite not.

Though, surely it wasn’t a tangible thing, for it could skitter like a passing shadow or morph into something resembling a man. A nothing-thing. Changeable.

The first time it had woken Ciel there’d been a storm tumultuous outside the manor’s windows; a wet slurry of rain and howling wind and the sporadic sparking blue glow of lightening. 

It had not been the crash and roil of thunder to stir him from his sleep. But rather a ticklish sort of touch at his cheek; like an errant insect taking refuge from the storm and somehow making its way onto his pillow and climbing across his face.

He’d swiped at it, at the sensation of it more to it, for there had been no tiny insect to speak of, only a lingering staticky shadow at his bedside; over-tall and shaped in the silhouette of a man, or a misconstrued version of one, anyhow.

It had done nothing more than simply watch him. And how Ciel had known for sure it had been watching him, he couldn’t exactly explain. Only that its hazy, blackened form appeared to bend at the waist, bringing the writhe of darkness closer, an inspection of the trembling boy upon the bed, covers tugged up snug underneath his chin. Wide-eyed and breathing very carefully as though utter stillness would somehow render him invisible. Or safe.

A shiver of apprehension down the length of Ciel’s spine; glacial. He expected the next bout of bluish lightening to scatter the vision, showing an empty room, nothing to be afraid of, nothing to suggest there was ever such a creature hovering by his bedside in the first place.

The lightening had come an indeterminate time later and it flashed about his room through the cracks in his curtains; a bright burst. A dance of shadows across the walls, squirming in the corners and streaming over the ceiling like retreating waves in an upside ocean of black water, yet…yet, the thing by his bed had remained steadfast. Unaffected like the normal shadows of the room.

Dark even in the fleeting bright light of the storm. Blackened and insubstantial and – strangely, awfully, irrevocably – orphic. 

It had drawn the boy’s attention completely. And even as his innards quivered in fear, tangled and accompanied by an itchy bit of heat moving through his veins; adrenaline in its rawest form, he could not look away.

There had been no discernible features on the thing. Nothing to suggest a face. Only the vague outline of a man’s form and nothing more tangible than that.

On the next flare of lightening, it was gone. 

There was the deafening sound of his heartbeat inside the canals of his ears; like the hollow drumming of wings. Yet, it was not entirely out of fear that his pulse raced. It was not pure terror that quickened his breath and dampened his armpits with clammy sweat.

It was not at all disquiet that made his stomach squirm uncomfortably. Warmth and something sharper, at odds to the lingering ice embedded in the notches of his spine.

It felt a little like curiosity. And a lot, too much – and wouldn’t father be pleased that his son was even more peculiar – like want.

A strange desire to uncover. To unspool the blackness of the creature and reveal its true form. To see what was hidden behind the veil of shadow and the blurry silhouette of human, of man. For what had come to visit him during the night hours had certainly not been either of those things.

And Ciel had desperately wanted to find out more.

No one had believed him when he spoke of the mirror people; the faceless men and women who glinted like mimicry versions of real people, moving through the looking glasses of the manor as though lost and unaware they were on the wrong side of the glass. As though they didn’t realise they were confined behind ornate wooden frames and hung upon the walls.

Father had not believed him of course. Mother would have, had she lived long enough for the – as father put it – visions to start in earnest.

Ciel purposefully concealed the goings-on when it came to the new intruder. The shadow-man who visited him during the hours of deep night when the manor was its quietest and all inhabitants were secure in dreamland. A silent presence who only ever observed the child from the bedside.

He kept it a secret. For it was his shadow and his madness. And should it not be wholly real father would only force him to swallow more foul smelling, bitter tasting tonics in the hopes the lunacy would retreat.

Loneliness was an uninvited guest more often than it wasn’t since his mother’s sudden passing. It arrived unannounced at the most unexpected times and left the boy aching, tender in his chest, busy in his head. A disorganised mess of black cobwebs spun thick in the confines of his skull. A sense of aloneness even with the servants about the manor; the cheery whistling from Finny in the gardens and the presence of the maid as she tidied swiftly if not always without incident. She had been cursed with two left feet, as father had put it.

Even the chef, gruff in his manner as he could be, would often spare Ciel a wink or a nod in passing.

For all the manor was inhabited, it felt vast and empty. A shell of a home in his mother’s absence. Less colour. As though the rose bushes refused to bloom in earnest, as though the sky was painted grey, the bright blue of times past forever hidden.

As though all vibrancy left with her. Diluted and starved. Fickle and thin.

Ciel found himself alone quite often. Perched on the back garden steps; surrounded by damp green grass and moss-covered stones and the lingering, sore feeling that would not abate from his chest. He didn’t believe it could ever truly leave him. It was immune to being shifted loose, to being shaken out of him like a rattling stone.

For all it felt hollow within him, it weighed him down, it tethered him to the lonely manor like a mutt to a tree. No matter how he pulled against the tether, a violent, desperate twist and contort of his body, he could not break free.

Destined to remain in the mired reality of loneliness. 

Even now, with his father sitting straight-backed across the dining table from him, knife and fork held neatly, chewing a bite of mutton slowly, a sticky smear of gravy on the tines of his fork, Ciel felt it should be simple – as simple as reaching out over the white linen tablecloth and touching his father – to connect. To feel not so alone.

It persisted still, that tender ache nestled behind his breastbone. Equally hollow and heavy.

“Eat your carrots, Ciel.” Spoken cleanly. His father always spoke with a conciseness that sat awry with the boy. As though he didn’t wish to waste breath or words on his son. As though he had a plethora of things he’d rather be doing.

“I don’t like them.” Ciel told him. 

“I don’t care. You’re looking a little peaky. You need the nutrition.”

“Mother never made me eat them.”

“Your mother coddled you.” A flicker of his father’s eyes, not quite a glance. Though Ciel saw the way his grip tightened on the handle of his knife; white-knuckled. How something flinched in his jaw; a grind of his teeth. A covert display of his irritation.

Mother had only ever been fair with him, Ciel thought. She’d indulged Ciel’s inner world without judgement. Believed it a lusty imagination to be nurtured and not a madness in his mind; the tales of faceless mirror men and women, the fanciful recollections of faeries in their flower garden. 

Oh? How wonderful, sweetheart. Did you make friends with them?

Of course not, mother. Faeries are very shy. They disappear as soon as anyone gets too close. But if you watch long enough and stay very still you can see them.

She’d have Bard make Ciel his favourite sweets, too. Father and mother had often bickered over such a thing.

If it is all he’ll eat, why shouldn’t I let him?

He needs meat and vegetables and structure, Rachel. Not cake and custard. He’s not a baby.

It had been a point of great contention between them. Sometimes, when his father put his foot down on the matter and made Ciel sit for hours at the dining table until his food grew cold, congealed gravy and wilted vegetables. And the lamps on the walls shivered low and almost out, lambent and anaemic. Sometimes then, his mother would bring him a slice of sponge cake with fluffy Chantilly cream and tart jam and let him have that instead. Telling Bard to hide the evidence with a conspiratorial wink at Ciel.

Now, with it just being him and father, he was made to eat the unsavoury meals. Forced to take tonics, too, whenever he slipped up and mentioned mirror-illusions or faeries in the flower garden.

It was a churning sort of sensation within his stomach whenever he had to pretend otherwise. Whenever he had to play a role to appease his father. It left his chest empty and often he felt embarrassingly on the verge of tears.

The only times he didn’t feel overlooked or alone was when he’d wake in the middle of the night to the shadowed presence; black and nearly formless. Pitch poured into the loose form of a man. 

He ate his carrots with as little fuss or grimacing faces as he could muster. There was no dessert. There hardly ever was nowadays, unless father was trying to impress guests.

It didn’t matter, not tonight, it hadn’t bothered Ciel since the arrival of the new being within the manor. Because he had something to look forward to, some strange entity to unravel and understand and amuse himself with. A distraction of sorts.

The faceless people trapped behind the looking glasses did not speak. How could they? They had no mouths. No eyes to witness where they were; held behind gleaming, fragile glass. Ciel often wondered if they ever became aware, could they smash their way free? A caustic shatter of glass in the dead of night, a featureless person climbing out of the jagged frame to wander the manor aimlessly.

Would they knock into the furniture, confused in the new space? For as far as the boy could tell, there was no obstacles inside the mirrors for them to bump into or fall over. For they drifted on by, heedless to his attention on them, lost things, existing in some refracted reality far removed from his own.

The faeries, of course, never dared to speak to him. He wasn’t entirely sure he’d hear them if they did so. They were so very minuscule; fragile winged creatures small enough to sit within the soft insides of the yellow marguerite flowers. He wondered if he’d hear their voices at all, even if they were shrilling with joy as they tussled in the air together as they often did. A puff of pollen off the tips of their shimmery wings.

As of yet, the shadow-man had not said a word either. But he was different from the rest. Ciel sensed a particular kind of interest emanating off of him.

And, with a heady little dip of his belly as he finished up the last of his mutton, he also knew that interest was directed his way. It was curious about him. Perhaps almost as much as he were of it.

“I’ve finished. May I be excused?”

Father liked to hold the control in any given scenario. He liked Ciel asking to leave the table or a room whenever they were together, which was not often, really, if Ciel could help it.

“One moment.” His father said, dabbing at the corner of his mouth with the thick, white napkin. There was no gravy to be wiped away, it was merely a pre-emptive gesture to stall a moment. To collect his thoughts and his words and deliver them neat and prim and brusque. Which he did so in the next breath. “Your Aunt Francis will be visiting in the coming week. She’ll be bringing Elizabeth with her.”

“Okay.” His aunt and cousin visiting wasn’t out of the ordinary. Though, usually they tailored their visits to holidays, Easter was not for another few weeks, and that small realisation sat wrong with Ciel. Like a game piece out of place. Incorrectly positioned.

“It’s about time you took your duties seriously.” His father said.

“My duties?”

“You’re almost a man now.”

Ciel disagreed. For all he was mature for his age, he was still only thirteen. Father did not concern himself with that trifling bit of truth, however, forging on ahead and saying what Ciel had begun to expect from the conversation.

“It will be time soon for you to begin courting a wife.”

“Lizzie?” 

It didn’t need saying. He said it anyway, gripping the edge of the table with both hands, as if to spring up out of his seat and storm away from the conversation and the table and the unavoidable responsibility his father was trying to push on him. Or to flip the heavy oak thing. Hah. As if he could manage such a feat. But it would have been satisfying to watch his father topple out his chair; a splatter of gravy across his crisp white shirt and carrot pieces in his hair and an agape expression of utter shock fixed upon his face.

It was not a new revelation that he and Lizzie were to eventually wed. However, when mother had been alive, she had often spoke of allowing Ciel a say in the matter. Allowing him some small bit of freedom to choose his future spouse for himself should he not desire his cousin; within reason of course. For a family such as theirs there had to be rules and regulations pertaining to such matters.

It seemed father was intent on undoing any semblance of hope Ciel had of autonomy.

“Don’t ask foolish questions.” He chided.

“Isn’t it too soon?” The mutton and the carrots were sitting hard in his gut. A knobby bit of nausea.

“You’ll be fourteen soon.”

“I’ve only just turned thirteen.”

“The older you get, the faster time gets away from you.” A pause in which his father placed down his napkin, sparing Ciel a long-suffering frown over the table. “I know you enjoy to be contrary for contrary sake; however, this is non-negotiable. Do you understand?”

“Yes, father.” When has it ever been negotiable? There had never been any pretence at parleying between them.

His father dutifully ignored his tone, which had been sharp-edged. He ignored, too, the way Ciel was scowling. He rarely ever indulged the boy’s sulks, after all. But, something about the purposeful ignorance made Ciel’s chest tight and his throat feel thick. Not quite the threat of tears, however.

Something hotter. Bolder. A fierce bit of loathing.

He left the table with a grating scrape of the chair, pushed roughly back, and a stomp of his feet. A slam of the dining room door for good measure. A very childish storm-off. But it felt good, too. To show his displeasure. Even if it would go ignored like most else. 

He slammed his bedroom door shut with all his might when he reached it. A useless thing, for the dining room was much too far from his room for his father to hear it. But, again, it helped ease some of his frustration. 

It was only once the echo of it had diminished and he’d turned away from the shut door with a hearty bit of self-satisfaction, that he realised he was not alone. 

Beside his bed, in the exact spot it deigned to be of a night time, was the shadow-man. Only…it was less shadowed in the daylight. Entirely not shadowed, in fact. Dressed smartly in a black butler’s uniform, silk tie neat at its throat. Dark hair, white gloves, and a gleaming garnet stare that was fixed firmly on Ciel. 

He paused, a fluttery bit of unease warring with the heat of thrill; hot in his belly and at odds to the itchy dread descending his spine, a warning to run. To hide. To make himself as small as possible.

Instead, he took a tiny, shuffling step forward. “Hullo.”

The not-butler – for it was easy to see it was merely a facade, a ruse meant to garner some small bit of trust from the boy – tilted its head to the side. As if it were considering how best to proceed. As if it had expected a different reaction. 

Could it speak? Could it even understand him? Ciel didn’t have long to ponder, for it appeared to straighten its back. Tall and looming and intimidating in the brief pause.

When it spoke, its voice was held low and quiet. A rather lovely sounding voice, Ciel thought. Smooth and controlled and not at all expected from the creature.

“Hello,” it said. Then, “Did I frighten you?”

“No,” not really. Only a very little. He kept that part to himself. “It’s not night time.” The words might’ve sounded like a misplaced conversation, ill-fitting, to anyone else. Not for the boy and the creature though.

“No, it’s not. Very astute of you.”

Was it mocking him?

Ciel sniffed, glancing behind him at the closed door, not for any sort of escape, but just in case father decided to chase him up the stairs and dole out some punishment for his impertinence. He rarely did, content with obliviousness. But trust him to ruin this introduction by deciding to take an active role in his son’s life all of a sudden.

All remained quiet beyond his closed door; only the distant warbling of Mey-Rin somewhere downstairs as she went about the dusting of mantels and cobwebbed corners.

“Are you the one who stands by my bed?”

“Do you need to ask?”

“I suppose not. Why are you here now?”

“I wanted to see you.”

“Why?”

“Why not?”

It talked in a strange way. Not quite straightforward, yet not quite not either. Ciel found himself more intrigued than annoyed by it.

He moved towards his bed, climbing upon it – he kept his shoes on, father and his need for order be damned – and came to kneel in front of where it stood, even perched upon his bed as he was, he was not as tall as it. 

“What are you?” He wondered.

It purposefully misconstrued his inquiry. “A butler.”

“No, you’re not.” He told it, straightforward.

“You don’t think so?”

It had all the right parts of a butler. The starched suit and the pristine gloves. The fob watch, silver and polished; Ciel could hear the soft tick-tocking of the thing in its vest pocket. 

“No,” but its eyes were not quite right. In the waning light of evening they appeared almost crimson, though Ciel saw clearly that they were meant to be brown, deep and cavernous. And its hair was too long for a respectable butler, silky and dark. Becoming for a man, Ciel thought to himself, a effusive bit of appreciation that made his stomach feel unsettled.

“What do you think I am?” It asked a question of its own when Ciel didn’t elaborate.

“I’m not sure…”

“Mm?”

“Do you know about the mirror people?”

“I’ve seen them.”

“Do you know them?”

“Not quite.”

“Do they come from the same place you do?”

“Not quite. You’re awfully fond of questions, aren’t you? Are all small humans the same?”

It watched Ciel very carefully; back-lit by the deepening sunset streaming in through the bedroom window, burnt umber glow, a golden halo of light about its silhouette. 

Something in the way it held itself very still gave Ciel the impression it was holding itself back. A tight-leash of self-control. But that couldn’t be the case, for it spoke very calmly and leisurely. As though it had all the time in the world. Unhurried. Appreciating.

“I’m not small,” it was not quite the right response to the question posed. Ciel left it as the only reply he gave. Folding his arms over his chest and staring up into its handsome face.

Only minutes earlier he was seated at the dining table trying to convince his father he was in fact small. Too young to court his cousin. And now, he was scrambling to appear the opposite. He didn’t understand his own logic. Only that the warmth in his belly had not abated and he desperately wanted this shadow creature – butler or man or whatever the deuce it truly was – to view him as someone worthwhile.

“You are small to me.” It told him. 

“I’m thirteen!”

“Is that so?” Amusement at the corners of its mouth, though it did not smile exactly. 

A sharp bit of embarrassment caught Ciel below the ribs, thrumming and sinuous, for surely thirteen did not seem such a big age to a creature that could be much, much older. How ancient might it be? It was difficult to know.

“How old are you?” Asking it was the simplest thing to do.

“Ageless.”

“That’s not a proper answer.” A throw of his chin. A display of ire to hide his own simmering, clammy self-consciousness.

A noise on the stairs. Footsteps. The top step creaked loudly as it was prone to do. Ciel found himself scuttling across his bed and off the end at the sound of his father’s footfalls – tidy and clipped and outside of his bedroom door already – and he half-shoved, half-slammed the door shut as it opened a fraction.

A sound of exasperation from the other side as Ciel looked over his shoulder at the black butler. It had not moved an inch, it watched him in much the same manner as before, half-curiosity, half something other. 

“You have to go,” he told it.

His father responded. “I won’t go. Stop this nonsense at once.”

“Not you!” And hells, but he’d pay for the perceived disobedience later, he knew it. “You need to go, before he sees you!” He whisper-shouted, a wrenched at his shoulder when his father gave a firm, unrelenting push against the door. Much stronger than his son.

Ciel stumbled back, hearing the disembodied words of the shadow-man even as he saw the furious face of his father, hardened into anger and disbelief.

He cannot see me, puerulus.

Ciel copped a back-handed slap across his face swiftly after. A stinging at his cheek and a bloodied lip. Father had said some words he’d not listened to, or rather could not hear over the clamour of his heartbeat, stern and spoken under his breath; the worse kind of scolding. 

When Ciel had been younger he might’ve tried to explain himself. There was a man, papa, only he isn’t actually a man but a butler, and not even a true butler but a shadow, you see? 

He’d learned the hard way that there was no amount of trying to explain himself that would ever work. And he did not desire tonic tonight.

He was forced to bathe early and told to say in his room for the rest of the night. As if he didn’t anyway when he wasn’t reading in the library. Still, the forced confinement stung as much as his split lip. A twisting bit of something through his insides. A little akin to hurt. 

He hadn’t expected anything less from his father. Yet, it still ached within him to be slapped and sent to bed over a misunderstanding. 

He tried very hard not to succumb to his tears. But it was not so easily done. And so, when the not-butler returned, Ciel was tucked up against his headboard, nestled into his pillows, hugging his knees close to his chest; wet-cheeked and drippy-nose and hiccupping wetly, a very humiliating position to be witnessed in.

“Let me see,” it said as it drew nearer in the dimly lit room. Only the candelabra was lit – for father must have told Mey-Rin not to bother tending to Ciel’s fire or shutting up his room for the night; he’d somewhat messily drawn his curtains and tried in vain to keep the embers in the hearth warm and robust; a failed task – the pale candlelight made the butler’s face shadowed. Ivory-white. Almost ghostly.

It reached out a gloved hand, and Ciel didn’t quite quell his little flinch; unbidden and not a testament to how he felt about it. He sniffled, tasting salt-tears and snot in the back of his throat. He must’ve looked a wretched sight.

His chin was cupped in cool cotton. A surprisingly gentle touch. And it brushed the pad of its thumb across Ciel’s swollen, tender bottom lip, directly over the little cut his father’s signet ring had made.

“Tsk, what a shame to mar such a lovely face.” 

Ciel looked up through his damp lashes at it; at the flicker of candlelight to the side of its face. A bright flame of it danced and writhed within its gaze. It was not looking at him, however, at least not looking at his eyes, but at his mouth. A lingering regard.

It made something unfurl within Ciel’s stomach. A ribbon of heat. Or perhaps, more fittingly, a blooming flame. A singe of something he could not name through his belly and lower. He readjusted his grip on his shins, tightening himself into the small curl he was in. 

He had nothing in the way of reply to its words. So, with another sniffling inhale, he said, “What was it that you called me earlier? When you disappeared? You spoke a word I didn’t understand.”

“Puerulus?” A stretching sort of grin. It bared its teeth, prominent canines. Almost they looked like fangs, pearly and sharp and glinting in the glow of the candelabra. It tightened its grip on his chin, swiping at the cut again, a stinging pain that Ciel ignored. “It means little boy.”

“Oh.” Oh. He was not sure if it was meant as an insult. But something in the way it bent down, a swathe of its dark hair falling out from its tuck behind a neat ear, suggested it had not been said meanly. Or with ill-intentions.

Something in the way its touch lingered on Ciel face a moment over-long, suggested it was the opposite of an insult. A compliment? His belly tightened, the flame within it growing bolder, hotter. He scrunched up his toes against the sheet, dipping his chin low when it finally removed its hold on him.

“Do you desire it healed?” 

“Huh?” As soon as he’d lowered his head he was snapping it up sharply. 

“Your lip.” It elaborated.

“It’ll heal on its own. There’s not much you can do for a split lip.”

“I can heal it for you now.”

“How?”

“Shall I show you?” A flicker of candlelight and a scatter shadow, surely that was it, for its gaze appeared to glow crimson for the faintest fraction of a heartbeat. Like the burn of hot embers.

It was not enough to stave off the boy’s curiosity. “Okay.”

“Close your eyes.” It ordered of him, not unkind, a whisper of its pleasant voice and nothing more sinister than that.

Ciel didn’t immediately do so, giving his room a precursory glance, as if there might be something hiding in the deeper shadows that lingered in the corners. As though it were seeking to trick him. 

There was no malice apparent on its face, however. It was as stoic as ever. High cheekbones and fine mouth and that same strange perceptiveness that lurked behind its gaze. A voracious curiosity.

When he finally closed his eyes he felt a shiver of apprehension move through him despite his resolve. It did not dull the sharp heat in the pit of his belly. It would not be so easy to extinguish such a thing, the child rather thought.

“Good boy,” it purred and Ciel loathed the snaring sensation that hooked behind his naval. He dug his nails into the cambric fabric of his nightgown to distract himself from it. Clutching his knees closer. “Tip your chin up a little. Yes, that’s it. Just like that.”

Ciel felt it draw nearer. A purely physical knowing, for all he saw behind his closed eyelids was the phantom glimmer of the candlelight and the hazy shape of the man. Not real, of course. Like looking into the sun too long and seeing the blinding dots a while after.

And then, without preamble, its hand was back at his chin, a skimming of cotton-covered fingertips along his jaw and then a pinch of thumb and fingers, holding him in place. A firm grip on his face.

“Nicely now,” it hushed and then it was pressing its mouth to his.

Of course, Ciel was not naive enough to not know what kissing entailed. He’d seen mother and father kiss. Brief presses of their lips together. Perhaps a lingering one whenever father was called away on business. 

However, a kiss was reserved for a loved one. For the person you were to marry. Not strangers. Not someone you held no affection or love for. Or, most of all, a shadow-man you’d only recently held a conversation with. 

He made to pull away, a visceral reaction wholly at odds to the rampant swell of heat through his belly; a lit-wick, an inferno. It felt too hot, too bright, too overwhelmingly good. And utterly confusing.

He was not allowed such simple escape, gripped tightly and painfully by the jaw and drawn back again, firmer against its mouth which was warm and insistent and pressed flush against his own. And then…then…oh hell, it licked him.

A wet, scalding stripe across his bottom lip where the little split was, tender and spit-drenched and Ciel reached up, unfolding himself even as he shoved at its shoulders, forcing it away from him and wiping his mouth with the back of his wrist as he glared up at its composed expression.

“What was that?”

“A kiss.”

“I know that. Why the bloody hell did you kiss me? You – you don’t kiss –”

“Children?”

“No! I mean, yes. But, but –” he could not form the words correctly, they came ungainly to his mouth and tumbled out in incoherent bursts. 

“I told you I could heal your lip and I did. That was all it was.”

“You kissed me!”

“Was it as undesirable as all that?”

“Yes!” He said through his teeth. Because it had been. It should have been. The heat spreading through his stomach and chest and much, much lower – an odd sort of warmth and tightness between his thighs that he’d not experienced before – would suggest his vehement word a lie.

He scrubbed at his mouth again as if to prove himself honest in his conviction.

It looked at him as though it could see clean through his pretence and into the heart of him. As if it knew of the slippery, disconcerting heat within him. Peculiar between his legs.

“So very young.” It hushed, not to Ciel, more of a soft confirmation to itself.

“I’m not.”

Though, gritty-eyed from crying over a slap from his father and held stiffly in affront upon his bed from a kiss, he could not deny how young he felt in that one moment. Not at all how he had wanted to portray himself to the creature.

Yet, it did not seem dissuaded by Ciel’s childishness. In fact, there was a certain kind of emotion behind the gleam of its gaze that moved through the boy; caustic and unorthodox and as obvious to Ciel as the tallow-scent of the candelabra was.

An obstreperous thing.

Did this creature like the fact that he was a child?

He dared not ask it. For it was a blasphemous thing to think, let alone speak into the hush of the room. 

An inside thought. A thing to be secreted away.

Just the same as Ciel’s visions. Just the same as the not so trifling curiosity he’d always seemed to hold towards boys and men. And never girls and women.

A stark bit of perverseness. Father would wallop him should he ever allude to the fact that he quite fancied the way Edward’s face was set out, sharp jaw and neat nose. The way his shoulders were much broader since the previous times he’d visited; an easy athleticism to him. Father would take to him with a belt should he ever say he preferred Edward over Elizabeth. Boys over girls.

When he’d been much smaller, he’d been told off for making two of the boy dolls in Elizabeth’s grand dollhouse wed one another. He’d even made them kiss, for they obviously loved one another enough so to get married, and married couples kissed sometimes. But father had not understood that. He’d given Ciel a dressing down in front of the entire family. 

He’d wailed, noisy and red-faced and thoroughly humiliated in front of his cousins and his stern-faced aunt Francis and mild-mannered uncle Alexis, and mother had swept him up into her arms, smelling of brandy the adults had been drinking and her sweetly floral perfume and spoken sharply to father. But after that Ciel had never dared be so overt with his fancies. 

Not even with mother, who he’d trusted with the mirror people and the faeries. 

There were some things best left untouched. Buried so deep that they could never be uncovered.

“How does it feel?” The man was asking of him.

“Huh?”

“You lip, how does it feel? Better?”

Oh. He reached up to touch hesitantly at where the cut had been. There was nothing there now. No pain or sticky drying blood. “How?”

“I cannot give away all my secrets at once, now, can I?”

Ciel thought it was a sidestep. An evasion of the question, or the truth. He did not push the matter, however. His eyes felt swollen and tired, raw from all of his crying. And the heat in his belly was slowly easing, losing its fervency, though still very much etched inside of him. An abrupt fatigue was overcoming him.

“Your father does not take kindly to being spoken rudely to.” The shadow-man was saying.

“I wasn’t speaking to him. He took it out of context.”

“Assuredly. He should not have struck you.”

“He doesn’t do that often.” Not really. Not unless he was particularly stressed and Ciel was toeing a thin line with his patience.

“Mm? Dear me, you look about ready to pass out.”

“I’m sleepy,” he said. It was the kind of sleepiness that one felt when falling to a sickness or going too long without a proper night’s rest. It was abrupt and out of place. Yet, Ciel was too tired to question it. Perhaps his crying had brought it on. It had been a while since he’d last cried. It tended to take it out of him.

“Then you should lie back.”

“Why?”

“I do not think sleeping sitting upright would be a comfortable way to slumber.”

Oh. Of course. His mind wasn’t working as it should; a sluggish thing stuffed into the confines of his skull. Muddled by the all-consuming lethargy.

“Mmm,” hummed, a vibration in his throat, an agreement as he let himself flop down onto his stacked-up pillows. They smelled freshly laundered, much better than the tallow and sooty scent of low-burning candlesticks. 

Ciel couldn’t keep his eyes open, blinking blearily, snatches of yellow candlelight and black-suited butler and shadowed corners of his bedroom, and quiet words spoken softly; slippery like oil over water. He could not grasp them long enough to understand them.

“It does not take much to drain small boys, it seems.”

He’d not been fully aware of slipping into slumber. A gossamer sort of retreat, like being sucked out into the glossy depths of a vast ocean on the edge of a wave. Only, it was much warmer and far more comfortable than floating in salt water.

He was, however, aware of waking up. For it came about abruptly, like a shock through his stomach. A fizzing bit of unease that felt misplaced in his quiet, darkened room. For the shadow-man was not beside his bed and there was no storm tonight. Nothing to have woken him from his hazy dreams. Fickle things now that his eyes were open. Dripping out his ears. Lost to his pillow.

It didn’t matter; he didn’t often remember his dreams.

He lay a moment in the darkness. The candelabra had burned itself out, or perhaps the shadow-man had blown it out? Ciel didn’t know. It took him an inordinate amount of time to realise precisely what had woken him.

And at first he’d thought it had been Mey-Rin’s voice somewhere distant in the manor, humming a familiar tune. But the maid would be soundly asleep by now, tucked up in her small room, and she was never so gentle with her voice and she would not know the song – the lullaby – that was being hummed.

Only mother knew it. She’d often sung it quietly to him when he was little. Especially after a night terror or when he simply couldn’t find easy sleep. 

But mother was not here. 

Yet still the melodious humming continued, nearer now, as though it were ascending the staircase. Searching. Moving listlessly through the nighttime manor.

Ciel’s stomach felt stuck to his spine, a crumpled thing, pulsing with dread. With a sickening bit of confusion. 

It’s not mother. He told himself, because it was almost exactly her voice. It can’t be her! 

There was a moment, small and thin and brittle, where he wondered if he were still dreaming; whether he’d not tumbled out of a pleasant dream and into a nightmare. Until the humming was outside of his bedroom door, drifting in through the slither of a crack – blackness outside in the hall, no wall lamps left alight this late at night, and no one awake to tend them – and the awful sensation down his back of being watched. 

It was all he could do to tug up his blanket, a feeble barrier, pulled up to the tip of his nose. As useless as his pillow would be in warding off whatever lurked outside his bedroom. Yet, it gave him some childish bit of safety, however insubstantial as it really was.

He desperately wanted to call out for his father. His voice was not complying, tamped down his throat, halfway stuck, and even the thought of scrambling out of bed felt too risky. For his door was barred by the presence beyond it. Where else was he supposed to go? 

He could hide under his bed. But that was no better than shielding himself with his blanket.

He could make a dash for the adjoining bathroom, but that would mean should the presence follow him, he’d be trapped in a much smaller room. And the mirror above the sink would likely hold the faceless people. He didn’t want to see them tonight.

He didn’t want to see whatever it was that hummed his mother’s favourite lullaby either. 

It’s not her. He reiterated to himself. It sounded like her. A spasm behind his ribcage. A weak bit of woe. Of wanting.

And when the door whined, dissident, opening slowly, he almost wished what was revealed was the soft face of his mother. Dressed in her flowing nightdress, her hair a tumble of fine-spun pale gold about her shoulders, her eyes sleepy and blinking in the darkness at him. Whatever is the matter? Can you not sleep my sweetheart? 

What deigned to venture within the shadowy confines of his bedroom was nothing of the sort.

A distorted thing. Ciel could see it only because it was darker than the dimness of his room; over tall, far, far taller than the shadow-man. Oh, this thing was definitely not the shadow-man. 

It moved with a maladroit gait, a shuffling, lopsided thing. Hunch-backed, its head hanging low on its shoulders. 

His body felt wired with hot adrenaline at the sight of it; sweat underneath his armpits and damp at his temples and between his thighs. A patch of wetness at the small of his back, making his nightgown cling to his skin. His breath came stuffy and moist, trapped by the edge of his blanket.

It was only when it drew nearer, moving towards the end of his bed, still humming, though now its tone faltered; raspier, like it was tiring of pretending, that he saw the stringy, limp hair; long and very dark, framing its face.

He wanted to scream.

He wanted his father.

The creature lifted its face, placing one bone-thin, long-fingered hand upon the bed. Clawed and overlarge and Ciel was only momentarily distracted by the sight of its hand before its upturned face caught his attention.

There was a greyish pallor to it, like it was sickly or half-decayed. A face that was not quite human, not even remotely close. The eyes too large, too round and cavernously black. Unblinking. The mouth wide and thin-lipped. A peeking of sharp teeth indenting its bottom lip.

Ciel did scream then, a shout brought up from the pit of his belly, loud and high-pitched and he kicked his heels against the mattress, scrambling away from its approach. For it continued to claw its way onto the end of his bed, dipping the mattress and balanced on its thin, too-long arms as it crawled towards the boy.

His back was flat up against the headboard, his knees a feeble barrier between him and it, and it was so reminiscent of earlier when the shadow-man had found him sobbing over father’s punishment, that it felt like no time had passed at all between that encounter and this one.

It reached out for him when it was half-way upon the bed. Though, large as it was, it had to hunch so as to not hit the canopy of Ciel’s bed with the top of its head. And Ciel’s insides voided his body, that’s what it felt like anyway, a splatter of innards, a wet and warm spill across his sheet, and he cried out, a garbled, useless scream and covered his face with his arms, as if he could pretend none of this was happening.

As if by not being able to see the ghastly creature climbing onto his bed, it could no longer see him. No longer harm him.

Foolish and childish and…

“Desino. Do not.”

Sharp-edged voice. Held low and cold and Ciel, despite the fear tightening his muscles and shivering cold through his veins, peeked over the crook of his elbow. A vaulting bit of relief. Close to elation, really. Bubbling up within his belly and threatening to froth over into his chest.

For in the darkened hollow of his open doorway stood the shadow-man; dressed in butler attire, neat and orderly and furious. 

The humming – which had been distorted, roughened and wrong – ceased entirely now. A reigning silence. A motionless moment where the creature upon his bed did not move and the butler on the threshold did not speak.

Then, all at once, the thing reared up, shrieking; a guttural sound that Ciel felt through his ribcage. A tangle of the scraggly head in the bed canopy as it whirled around, removing itself from the bed, and facing the butler.

“You will go.” Spoken with a snap of the butler’s voice. A hard bite to his words. 

The creature wailed again. Thrashing its head, a wrench of the bed canopy, a jolt through the boy as his bed was moved a few swift inches. A lurch of his stomach and the awful incapacitation of fear that held him immobile throughout it all. A useless thing upon the bed.

Then, with little more than a thrash of its deformed body, the creature dissipated right before Ciel’s eyes. A scatter of shadows and it was no more.

His chest felt sore from the way his heartbeat had hammered at his ribcage. His throat, when the black-dressed butler approached the bed, felt thick and tight and unable to form any words whatsoever.

He felt the warm wetness underneath his rump, the way the cambric nightgown clung heavy to his crotch and he despised his body’s involuntary reaction to such a fright. It was babyish and made his face heat with mortification.

He tried to bend over himself, a useless attempt to hide the dampness staining the front of his nightgown. For the sharp scent of urine was hard to mistake, difficult to miss.

He wished wholly for the ground to open up, a great gaping maw, and consume him and his wet bed whole. A gulp and swift swallow. An escape from the humiliation.

It did not occur, of course. Such a thing was impossible. So, instead, he covered his face with his hands, hiding like a child and feeling pathetic for it.

He’d have preferred father witnessing such a deplorable thing, not this strangely captivating creature, playing at butler and moving closer to his bed.

He saw the polished toe tips of the dark shoes through the cracks of his fingers. Even in the gloom they stood out. He squeezed his eyes shut.

“Tsk, none of that now.”

A hook of the shadow-man’s finger at Ciel’s wrist, tugging gently though it was not a polite askance but a firm yet silent command to remove his hands. Its touch didn’t linger, however, allowing the boy the chance to comply.

Ciel wouldn’t. He couldn’t. Too ashamed. Wet between the legs and shivering still from the fright. Decidedly not what he ever wanted to appear like in front of the man.

“Nicely now.” A dip of that smooth voice, not unkind, but certainly not amused by Ciel’s resistance. 

“No.” He spoke it against his hands, warm breath and muffled voice. “Go ‘way.”

Silence. Ciel almost believed it had listened to him and vanished. 

Then he felt the mattress sink, the settling of weight beside him. And that was strange, for he hadn’t expected the shadow-man to be able to affect its surroundings. It had only ever watched him, with the exception of the very first night it had visited him, in which Ciel was certain it had been the ticklish caress he’d felt upon his face. Stirring him to wakefulness. 

It had shown no further ability or desire to interact with its surroundings beyond that. Beyond its brief few touches.

“You’ve made quite the mess,” a plucking at the hem of Ciel’s nightgown. The boy kicked out instinctively, not very hard, to fend it off.

“Don’t touch me.” He said, his voice did not hold steady, wound up tightly in his throat and threatening to crumble and crack.

“Why? Because you’re filthy?” Not the words he’d expected, but yes, that was a rather good reason why it shouldn’t touch him. He was damp with his own piss. His nightgown and bed, too. “I do not mind the mess.”

“I do!”

“Look at me, puerulus.”

“Don’t call me that. I’m not little.”

“You’re feisty when embarrassed. It amuses me.”

Well, good that one of them was enjoying the moment, then. Still, the calm manner it had about it tonight – as with all the nights it had visited him – made something within the boy back down. A relaxing of his ego, perhaps. And he lowered his hands away from his face, cool air and the ammonia-scent of his accident and, oh, but the shadow-man was exceptionally close.

Close enough that if Ciel so desired, he could shift his toes half an inch across the damp bedsheet and touch the side of the black-clad thigh.

Close enough to be sitting in Ciel’s mess. 

There was nothing to suggest disgust on its fine face. It watched him in that steady, unwavering way. A lingering look that made Ciel scratch awkwardly and needlessly at the side of his jaw, at the non-existent itch there, because it was avid and just a touch darkened.

Not with anger or any negative emotion. It was something Ciel couldn’t place. It looked a little like it wanted to strike him. Though, that was a silly notion, for when it next moved, it instead reached out to touch the side of his face.

Cotton against his skin, fleeting, before it drew its hand away.

“You’ve a pretty colour about you. It is most alluring.”

“You can see as much in the darkness?”

“You cannot?”

“No, not very much. It’s all very shadowy.”

“Mm.” Non-committal. Ciel wondered how well it could see if it had spied his blush as easily as that. He wondered what else it was capable of. Certainly, it could shift its shape and become what it desired. For it had not been this well-dressed, neatly put together butler at first. 

“Do you know what that thing was?” It was easier to ask questions than it was sit in silence with dampness all around him. Simpler to focus on getting answers then facing the reality of wetting the bed over a fright in the night, no matter how terrifying the sight had been.

“Of course.”

“Why was it trying to get on my bed? Was it after me?”

“It’s taken a rather limerent interest in you, it seems.” A thinning of the butler’s lips, displeasure and something else; a flinty thing sitting far back in its eyes that Ciel couldn’t name.

“What is it?” He pressed.

“A ghoul.”

He hadn’t had an answer in mind, so ghoul was fitting enough. He’d heard tales of them; creatures who fed on human flesh. 

Edward had conjured up a story about a ghoul one time when Ciel had been a few years younger than he was now, on a sleep-over at his aunt and uncles. He’d spun a tales about how it sought out small children to kidnap them from their beds during the witching hour, stealing them away from their family and their home.

Ciel hadn’t slept well for weeks after. Begging his father to let him share his bed. If mother had been alive, she’d have allowed it. But father was not as lenient and he’d made Ciel return to his own room and shiver under his covers until dawn light. Tear-dampened pillow and a tender full bladder. A hitching sort of ache behind his breastbone at the distance his father demanded. How he’d missed his mother in those weeks, more than usual, a hollowness expanding within him. Sore and torn wide.

“It was pretending to be my mother.” Ciel said, a snaring ache behind his ribs, grief and dread. A lingering chill down his spine at that particular iniquity. 

“I know. It was doing a poor imitation of her. It does not possess the cleverness to know that her portrait hangs in the hallway. Or else it would have been much more convincing in its guise.”

“Does it come from the same place as you?”

A tilt of its head. It had used that gesture before, too. It was equal parts curiosity and amusement, Ciel rather thought. “And where do you think I come from?”

“I don’t know,” not the mirrors, for it had said as much. Though, it knew of the mirror people, too. “I suppose someplace much different from mine.”

“Quite different,” it agreed. It did not answer the question properly, though.

“Does it come from your home then?”

“My home? That’s quite the way to put it.” A smirk, tucking up one corner of its mouth. It was only the very faintest bit unnerving. A shiver through the boy’s stomach. He ignored it, for as disconcerting as the shadow-man could appear in glimpses, it was far from the terrible thing that had sought Ciel out, humming a lullaby up the stairs. A grotesque imitation of his dead mother. “I suppose you could say we share the same world.”

“It listened to you.”

“It knew what would happen if it didn’t.” There was heat behind the words. A snarl of something animalistic almost. A biting, sneering bit of fury.

Another turn of unease inside Ciel’s stomach, as though his insides were scrunching up into a tight mass within him, as though they knew something he didn’t. He paid it no mind. He did not think this creature desired to harm him. The viciousness was not directed his way but at the ghoulish thing that had attempted to crawl its way into Ciel’s bed.

The bathroom was fogged up, a slick of it on the mirror above the sink; veiling any mirror people – as the small human referred to them as – who might be idling behind the glass. A small reprieve for the shaken little boy.

The bathtub, a large, clawed-feet thing, was filled almost to the brim with steaming hot water. Beside it, standing in his stained nightgown and picking at the hem of his sleeve, the boy studied the ripple of water, as though he were concerned.

Perhaps something was not to his liking?

“Is it too hot?”

“Probably, but,” a sidelong look, almost shy, like the child hadn’t just screamed his little heart out, pitifully high and wailing and then subsequently wet his bed in front of him. His shadow-man. And wasn’t that winsome. A child’s way of viewing him.

He found it charming, if not slightly on the nose.

A shuffle of the boy’s feet; neat toenails and pale, small toes. The thin dribble of urine down the inside of one ankle.

The boy was nervous for some reason.

“What is it?” He inquired, purposefully feigning interest in the lye soap cradled within a gold-gilt dish, slick and pungent smelling. For he knew his unyielding observation tended to unnerve humans. This boy especially. It was a difficult feat in and of itself not to look, mind you. The child was most lovely in appearance.

Much smaller for thirteen than most his age. He’d been surprised by the admittance from the boy, for he’d believed the child to be a few years younger than that.

“Can you…” a glance at the closed door, then back to the water, then, a rather hearty nibble on the plushness of his lower lip. Very nervous indeed. “Can you turn away while I get in?”

Oh. But ah, and that was somewhat unexpected. Though, perhaps it shouldn’t have been. He’d been most pleased in the child’s response to their kiss earlier. A small creature lashing out in confusion. Acidulous blue gaze and the stirrings of want.

Lust had a sweet scent to it; especially when it came to humans. The more innocent the desire, the sweeter it was. And this boy, small and denying, had smelled of sugar and syrup; the finest sweetmeats.

A heady thing. One that had not gone unnoticed by the creature.

“Of course.”

He turned away without any showiness. A simple averting of his gaze, facing the misted-up mirror. Beyond the sheen of condensation, he thought he saw the ripple of movement.

The soft sound of the boy divesting himself of his wet nightgown. Then the slosh of water behind him. A hiss from the child – the water had been a touch too hot after all – but soon after the boy said, quiet and muffled, “You can turn around now.”

He was crunched up against one end of the large bathtub, his knees pulled closed to his chest – a familiar position, the child appeared very fond of curling up exceptionally tiny – and his pointed little chin was nestled into the small valley of his knees, a press of that plush mouth to water-slick skin.

He was a very beautiful human so far as humans went. Porcelain pale and very, very pitiable.

“What’s your name?”

A not so expected question. Posed from the small child sitting furled and shy within the steaming ripple of bathwater. And something within the creature shifted a touch out of place; a jarring though not entirely unsavoury sensation.

“Why do you ask?”

A furrow of the boy’s neat eyebrows, puzzled by the response he’d been given. “It’s polite to ask someone’s name. And I haven’t yet.”

“You may call me what you like.”

He’d never had a human inquire about his name before. This was new and strange and not something he was sure how to proceed with.

“You don’t have a name?” A disbelieving sort of quirk of the child’s head, lifted from his knees. A slick moistness above his upper lip, a sheen of perspiration down the column of his neck; glinting off the sharpness of his collarbones. Most enchanting this selcouth little boy. “What if I call you something you don’t like?”

“I’ll like any name you decide for me.”

“Any?” He didn’t trust the devious press of the child’s mouth. A display of something more caustic from the boy. “What about Sebastian then?”

“That’s fine.”

“It was my dog’s name. Or...mother’s dog, rather.”

“Your dog?” And really. The little imp. It was a baring of the small things’ teeth, that bit of underhandedness. A show of its more irreverent nature. It struck through him like the heat of a sharp blade fire-warmed.

“My mother’s.”

“I see.”

Another press of that pretty red mouth. There was amusement in the blue eyes, warm-edged and a trifling distracting. He diverted his attention to the soap dish, plucking the slippery bar from it. His gloves made it easy not to lose it.

“If you had of told me your actual name, you wouldn’t be named after a mutt.”

“Is that so?” One must tread carefully when faced with such effrontery. The child was not being mean per se, but avoiding. If one threw a handful of gritty sand into their opponents’ eyes, said opponent could not see the fumble or the slip, could not witness the embarrassment of being exposed.

The child was feeling exposed, naked and small and curled inwards as though he wasn’t telegraphing his unease clear as day. His embarrassment. His desire to not be witnessed.

“You have no need to be shy in front of me.”

He did not say the rest. I’ve watched you bathe many times over. Seen the sluice of water down the notches of your spine and watched the moored drift of your small cock in the water. I’ve seen you wash between your legs and I’ve wondered when you’d begin to grow warm and hard there… how many more years until I could watch you rub yourself to a shivering climax?

I’ve seen it all. So, do not hold reservations in my company. I desire it all.

The boy did not reply to his words, instead, he rested his cheek against one knee; a squish of it, a bleary, tired gaze up at his shadow-man. His Sebastian.

“Do you want to know my name?” He said, a question to cover up the fact he’d not replied properly.

“I know it.” Sebastian said.

Disbelief again, knitting up the boys’ eyebrows, a scrunch of his pert nose. “What is it then?”

“You’ve forgotten your own name? How absentminded of one so young.”

“Of course not. Don’t be tiresome. You know what I meant.”

Oh, but the boy was very disquieted by the whole situation. Sharp-tongued and unwilling to unfurl himself let alone find humour in anything.

“Ciel. It’s French for sky, or heaven. A very pretty name for a pretty little boy.”

A widening of the boy’s eyes; not completely to do with the reveal of his name and its meaning, Sebastian thought, but more so to do with the compliment tacked on. He did not rile at the little, either, thoroughly caught off guard.

“How did you know that?” A thorough ignorance towards Sebastian’s intended compliment, just like his father was well-versed at. Tsk. The two of them were eerily similar at times.

The child would hiss and spit and deny such a thing should Sebastian ever mention it. The older Phantomhive wouldn’t even hear Sebastian to begin with. Some humans just did not possess the sight. It had worked in Sebastian’s favour, mind you. And the child was much more interesting to court and play with, anyhow. Amorphous. Able to be moulded into whatever Sebastian might decide. And he had many interesting ideas.

He turned the bar of soap over in his hand, a slick of residue left on the white cotton covering his palm. “That you’re pretty? I’m quite perceptive. And it’s very hard to overlook.”

“Not that.” Little liar. The swift rise and fall of the skinny shoulders, a hitching inhale, spoke of his wariness when it came to being called pretty, to being paid a compliment. “The part about my name.”

“A faery told me.”

“Are you teasing me?”

“I’m being entirely serious. They quite enjoy your company in the garden.”

“They do?”

“You haven’t noticed? They like to show off whenever they know you’re watching. Here, clean yourself before the water grows tepid.”

He held out the lavender scented soap, which after a pause the boy took, losing it almost immediately, a pounce of the slippery bar out of his hand, a splash of it into the water.

“You’ve tried to boil me like a hapless lobster, I doubt it’ll cool off any time soon.” Grumbled the boy as he somewhat awkwardly attempted to chase the soap across the bottom of the tub, still avidly refusing to uncurl himself, bent over his knees and sloshing water over the side of the tub. A widening, misshapen puddle of it upon the floor, stretching towards the toes of Sebastian’s shiny shoes.

The bluish-black hair at the boy’s temples was damp from the heat and the steam. There was a particular sort of beauty in the trickle of water down the nape of the bent neck. Sebastian found himself reaching out, an unbidden decision made without his full consent, and he caught the bead of water with the back of one knuckle. A seep of warm water into fine-spun cotton.

The child froze in his tussle with the soap, tightening up all over. Yet, there was a deepening heat about the flush of his cheeks when he righted himself, pressing his back up against the curve of the tub once more. It had nothing to do with the humidity of the room and everything to do with Sebastian’s touch, benign as it had been. Or rather, as it had appeared to be. For something was rampant within him; slick as the lavender soap and heated much like the too-hot bathwater.

He drew his hand away, studying the teardrop damp patch that darkened the white of his glove; discomfited by the vehemency behind that snaring, strange sensation confined within his chest.

It would not do to grow attached to the little thing. It was wholly unadvisable, in fact. A most contrary thing, to hold affection – if that was what the unusual feeling was – for the thing you intended to destroy.