Author's Note: with a fond Happy Birthday to Jesse (innate on eljay); 30 out of the 50 theme prompts on 1fandom's second table. Sorry for the missing 20, but I couldn't get the whole piece done on very short notice. ;_;
-
HEAVY.
"You
wear- "
"You wear that face - "
"You wear
it well."
-
SLIP.
"Give me something," hot and feverish and choking on their pittance, on the burned Eucharist of ashes upon ashes and his once estate's kindly Deo, Deo est, Deo est Gloria, and his fingers clench the benediction of bruise, alabaster, liquorice and ruin, where they should rattle finery and bone, "Give me their everything."
-
UPHOLD.
His word, like his honour, is the servant's turn of clockwork, too exact to need binding, too mundane to do without, too fickle for repercussion, too uniform for discount, too many, too there, too much; the demon assumes flesh not his, wets the ring's blue with the white taste of sighs and the tear of his tongue, and says, says something, very quickly, about dinner.
-
MAGIC.
"Pull the rabbit out of the hat, young master, just put your hand in," and it comes away with blood.
-
HOLE.
There's a mouse, there's a mouse and he's holy and his tail very dark, and he wants to eat him, eat him whole, in his hole, wants to slip fingers in, where they'll break and come out in cobweb of nether, dark something slow, something stick-mud, dark with crust and soil and dark with bitten edge, he'll shackle the Beast when it's squirming and feeble and earning its air, crush its bones out, crush them, his leg rub serendipitous, crush his eyes, blood scourging his knee caps, crush his limbs, crush him, eat him, Hide in your holes.
-
INSIDE.
Hollow, weak, hollow, the echo too blunt, fist digging in pulse unoriented; there is nothing here, no titian, cantaloupe, citrus, or malfunction, no bittersweet tang, no soul to be had, look elsewhere, there is nothing, look, leave, no, he has checked, no.
-
WORLD.
"Are they watching? Are they all watching yet?"
-
PINK.
The frill of her dress, the stones of her gown, the embroidered rim of her hat, the curved silk of her glove, the serenity, the touched flush of her face: it is pink, all of it pink, scarlet, fuchsia, candy, magenta, pearl, the names of them synonyms and Lady Elizabeth's grace, Ciel rubbing his eyes now and forever, "I think I've gone blind;" Sebastian looks again and possibly whimpers.
-
LOVE.
Aunt Angelina's calligraphy leaves to be desired, in matters adjectival, if not those of form: "Your father was a dignified, noble, enduring soul, and I shan't let it be said that his son is anything unlike him, so yes, you will eat your vegetables, and we won't speak of it again."
-
STONE.
Finny teaches him how to weed, and he stifles fig sweet fictions of cuts daunted and blisters, biding trust with the rocks and the twigs that run steep; I'll run this place clean – Sebastian wraps his fingers in a gentleman's kerchief – you'll see.
-
HERE.
Tanaka is the arbiter of his injustice, and the decision immemorial is cut clean in possibility: where there is old, there is no new, and now a young butler arises, and surely the excuse, there need be one, to destitute in the eye of nobility; Tanaka will bend the knee, or bend to his grave, and the man spares Ciel the bother of words' duress, bowing once before Sebastian, twice before the Master, to open their door, "Announcing Lord Ciel Phantomhive, first of his name, and his gentleman's gentleman."
-
NOW.
Hand – click – narrow – print - slim – order – pin – order- down – bullet – teeth - just glass – Seba – move – just gla – click – bite – caught – held – breathe; the firearm kisses his temple cold.
-
STAR.
Afterward, when they meet – when he is presented – when the Phantomhive resumes what was once, lies now lost, the title, the name, the gain, and the interest, the proximity of her blessing in hesitant guise, the Queen's authority; he needs a hand to keep him steady, and ready for her order, body broken by whip, fire, branding galore, and he can't look at her, can't stand to, will learn.
-
WAY.
Lau teaches him the Way, because he is Confucian at times, and prolific at others and something tells him, something ripe, there is marriage in death among children, and adepts.
-
DISH.
His hand connects with them all, his wish and his will, and every staple of credit, every ounce of application, every sliver and silver, like his Mother's doting eye, is his to pick on the new china of this very new home: Orient in disgrace, Venice glass in waged war with coloured powder; "One at a time," and he bides idle with the cutlery, resuming, renewing, redressing the ghost, "One at a time."
-
PRIDE.
He maligned the Lady Circe not through slight, or error, or the graveyard-tipped courtesy of once upon a September, where the eyes were cast quickening on more her diamonds than her spell; but because, at her ball, it's liturgy of "I don't dance," then the rest of his eve is a careful exchange of half gestures and rhythm against the chalk of his gun's barrel.
-
BUILD.
Makeshift it like a changeling, from old blood and bird bone, come upon its placenta like the stillborn gasping faint - break the membrane, break the still lithe vase, break the August, and the cuckoo's coiled eggs, break the sweet cartilage, break the walls and the turns and the glass panes spun new, make trapped nest with your gods, and, Come home, Phantomhive, cross yourself, enter.
-
EXPELLED.
Sebastian eats nothing, which is righteous, and good, and terrible, and fickle, and unneeded perhaps, surely unneeded, so he slips eager fingers in the turn of that mouth, laves the tongue with the punished push of a thumb, and lays chocolate there, first pudding, then sweet meats, lays the edge of his nail, the embodied bristle, and, "Eat it, eat, you son of a cur, eat like men do, and choke;" and Sebastian swallows.
-
LOST.
"Found you, found you, found you, found you, found..." in the mirror, in the tilde of reflection, in water burned white, in metal polished, at the tips of his fingers, his face is raw, the one eye bleeds.
-
CRACK .
"I have nothing to give them," the coin dances a flip in his hand's veiled assumption, and the Circus men catch the beat in their act, "And everything to take."
-
QUIT .
He pretends he doesn't know him, not as fair maids in travesty often would, with the lent ease of deception and the sullen laissez-faire of someone born-bred to his rank and his brandy, settling nicely on Druitt's white knee - Druitt, who is drunk, very terribly drunk, wicked and fool and fooling with his glass, "We are very old, you and I. There's nothing pretty about it. It isn't vintage;" Ciel rests his head back on that chest, which is oddly sturdy and oddly weak, and perhaps, yes, lonely, just as terribly, wickedly, foolishly lonely, and when Sebastian collects him, he'll have been the birthday doll of a ghost smiling practiced etiquette.
-
PLAY.
They tell him, pray, it's difficult, pray, don't touch, pray, not til you're older, and elder, and can't fit a corset even in game, when you're filled to the brim with coin fare, passports, estates and expectations, but he ties his own laces, and cuts his meat, and pours his water alone all the same; his butler, laughing (astray).
-
NUT
.
One obeisance after the other, and his cake comes undone with the turgid essence of excuses.
-
DOWN.
Down is the cross, and beneath it, the land, down is the sorrow, swept under dry sand, down is his elbow, white brittle white, down is her body, down is her spite, down is his hair, and down is her lair, and down are her arms, never to hold, and down is her story, vexed and untold; he hugs Aunt's corpse closer; Sebastian raises the umbrella.
-
READY.
The first kill he commits is drafted in waver, Sebastian coy under the order's caress, forlorn beast in sloppy gesture, distracted by nuance and steadfast in slow kill, drawing out disembowelment, if not the consumption; Ciel nods, nods once, then again, nods thrice, til his neck's stiff, and he's perched at good vantage, so the corpses greet him like flowers sun-kissed, "Faster next time," he says, and nods more, without blinking.
-
ANIMAL.
He buys, one morning, one sweet summer morn, with a doomsday's lacklustre of whim and defiance, two cages of birds, a large white parrot, a lizard of the Indies, and a peacock on leash, and no cat; names them, walks them much as they bear walking, waits on the peacock, lets them peck at his fingers and eat from his hands, laughs with them and at them, and thinks, They're nice, and wakes midsummer-dreaming at two past midnight stroke, with blood round his mouth, feather mantle dyed close, corpses on his sheets, and Sebastian looming; and he says, "Oh."
-
TEEN.
Titter and teeth and old like snow and wary; "Happy Birthday," in his ear bled cunning, "Happy Birthday," and the wrist yields, bone breaks.
-
BURN.
See it fall with the grace of Pan's softest leg, storytelling a dream some chameleon lavished on the leaf it romanced to obscenity's peak, see his finger come clean, see the cinders crawl against it, see the print of cat eyes searing dull in his skull, see where his mother slept, where his father rested, see where his soldiers were kept, his tins and his needles, see where the maids dwelled, see the ashes; and burn and burn and - silent.
-
THEY.
He tugs at the sleeve, pushes and pulls, on a diet of frenzy, and a glutton for meat, because his first audience with society at large cannot possibly go awry, not at this hour, not on his return, not with Sebastian holding him straight, and forward, "What do they see in you? I can't imagine."
-
ROT.
The Undertaker fancies him, he knows this much, fancies the lace of his fear, and the incense of his want, the look in his eyes, the eyes, their crystal, the roundness that binds and bulges and hounds, draws the nail in, the pupil, up, down, big, bigger, draws the black of it, nail, draws the tip of it, nail, draws the push of a coin under his dark tongue, draws the claw and the bite, and the parliament of ravens, draws the meat bursting open, draws the bone digging out, draws a geometry of nitrate and asphyxiation, draws him in; yes, the Undertaker fancies him.