At long last, the soul was his.

Perched on a stone slab, Ciel stared up him, eyes wide and expectant. His pulse thrummed erratically at his throat. "Well, Sebastian? What are you waiting for?"

What was Sebastian waiting for? He wasn't sure. He had been pining after this soul for what felt like a century; he should've been long ready for this moment.

And he was hungry. Starving. If he didn't consume this soul now, he didn't know how much longer he would last.

It took effort to uncurl his fingers, raise them to his mouth, and bite off his gloves. They fluttered to the ground like white rose petals, and he cast them one last glance, knowing that in just a few moments, he would be a butler no more.

"My lord, are you ready?"

"Are you ready?" challenged Ciel, eyebrows raised. The tiniest bit of fear shone in his eyes, but it was hardly noticeable; the way he held himself and the clenching of his jaw hid any fear well.

Sebastian didn't answer the question. If he did, he would have to tell the truth and say he honestly wasn't ready yet, most likely never would be. In all honesty, he wasn't sure if he wanted their story to end.

"Sebastian," Ciel whispered, eyes lidded, "tell me a story so I can go to sleep." The moon cast light on both of their pale faces in the darkness of the bedroom.

Sebastian shifted in the bed they rested in and drew his young lord closer to his chest. He pressed his words to Ciel's hair. "What kind of story would you like?"

"A real one. One about your past. You've had previous masters, have you not?"

"Indeed, my lord, but none were nearly as interesting as you."

Ciel's face heated beneath the demon's fingertips, and he squirmed feebly, trying to dodge Sebastian's amused gaze. "Damn demon . . . You've gotten too good at flattery . . ."

"I'm telling the truth. You've been the most interesting from the very start."

"You'll probably find me the most interesting at the end," he scoffed.

Sebastian said nothing, lips a thin, unyielding line. He just laid a kiss on the earl's nose and left it at that.

Sebastian walked closer to the stone where Ciel sat. Endless land and forests spanned around them, but his eyes focused only on that single slab and the boy atop it.

"Was it satisfying?" he asked, something he had been quite curious about. He didn't understand the way humans thought, after all. "Achieving your revenge? Having power over the people who defied you?"

"Satisfying?" Ciel thought for a moment, then shook his head, much to the butler's surprise. "No, not satisfying. Humans are incapable of being satisfied. We'll always want more than we have, as long as we have greed."

"Sebastian." Ciel's eyes were insistent. Pretending to be powerful. He was young, only eleven human years, but his stance was more confident than that of most adults. "You will bring me victory."

Sebastian's shoes clicked against the tiles as he walked up to his master, fell into a bow. "Of course."

"Those who wronged the Phantomhives will pay," he said. His facade slipped for a splinter of a second, and there was the scared, frightened orphan beneath- but then the weakness was gone, and the boy was hardening his jaw, clenching his fists.

"I will have my revenge!"

"But," Ciel continued, "it was relieving, for a moment. Achieving my revenge, that is." He looked up the sky, at the stars and moons and galaxies. "Knowing that the people who tainted my family name are no longer in this world . . . I can finally move past it, and them."

"I see."

Ciel looked at him, his lips parted; it was his turn to stall. "Will you be satisfied after eating my soul?"

Sebastian immediately shook his head. "No. My hunger will only have lessened slightly, not enough to be satisfied. Like humans, demons are never satisfied, either. Although . . ." A rare smile broke through, a genuine one. "I had my share of relieving moments, also, even if they didn't have to do with your soul."

"My lord, you're stepping on my foot. Is this honestly what you call dancing?"

Ciel looked up, blushing up to his ears. His hand, which was clasping for dear life to Sebastian's waist, tightened further, fisting the fabric. "S-Shut up. You're just too tall!"

"My height isn't the problem here," Sebastian pointed out, but he was grinning.

To solve the issue of Ciel's terrible dancing skills, Sebastian swung the boy into his arms instead, despite his protests. Ciel's legs straddled his waist, warm and slim on his hips. One of his hands twined around the demon's neck; the other interlaced with Sebastian's own hand. And then they were dancing, the only shoes on the floor being Sebastian's polished ones.

As they circled the room, he stared at the boy in his arms, who was snuggling into the crook of his neck adorably. Whenever his eyes found this human, his chest ached, but why?

The ache didn't feel unpleasant, though.

It almost seemed to lighten the darkness weighing his long dead heart; a beacon of white after centuries of black.

When he was with this human, he could pretend that he was human, too.

The time for stalling was over, Sebastian knew. Their game couldn't last forever; they couldn't simply stop seconds before "checkmate."

"My lord," he said, "this is going to hurt quite a bit, I'm afraid."

Ciel just nodded, and took a shallow breath.

Sebastian wondered what he would do once this was finished. Find a new master? Go back to snatching whatever souls he pleased? He didn't know, didn't care to.

"Wait, Sebastian." Ciel was looking up at him, one last order glittering in his marked eye. "Once I'm dead . . . take my ring." He wiggled his fingers, and the blue diamond on his Phantomhive ring glinted in the moonlight. "I . . . I won't be needing it anymore."

"Young master, that ring is reserved for Phantomhive Earls only-"

"And I'm the last one. It doesn't matter anymore, so I want you to keep it. Besides, you were a Phantomhive butler. That's close enough."

"What is your name?"

The boy's expression was blank, empty. He seemed unfazed by the dead bodies of the cult members around him. "I am . . . Ciel. Ciel Phantomhive. The successor to the title of Earl Phantomhive."

The demon's lips curled. "I see. Very well. Then I must take a form befitting the servant of an earl."

Ah, he thought, why not a butler?

Sebastian sighed, relenting. Who was he to deny an order? "If you insist." He didn't want to keep the ring, to be honest. For some reason, he felt that if he kept even the tiniest bit of his little lord with him, it would only bring pain, and the inability to move on.

With that matter settled, he leaned down and cradled Ciel's cheek in his hand. His thumb traced around the boy's violet eye, and he smiled; his marked eye really was beautiful, even more so than his blue one.

He pressed a kiss to both of Ciel's eyelids, one last caress. His lips brushed his nose, his cheek, his lips- and then it was all over, for Sebastian could taste his soul this way, and it was far too much. His hunger was too much.

"Checkmate," he breathed, and then Ciel screamed, for he had been warned; soul extracting was painful-

It was always painful for the human, but for the first time, it was painful for Sebastian, too.

The soul was delectable, delicious- but all he could think about was how ironic it was; him killing this human after protecting him, caring for him, for so long.

"Young master, I apologize, but I cannot allow you to have sweets before dinner."

"Sebastian," Ciel growled; it almost sounded like a childish whine, "do I have to make this an order?"

"It's bad for your health-"

"I don't care. I want sweets."

"I'll give you something better," Sebastian promised, before capturing the earl's lips in a kiss.

He closed his eyes, not wanting to watch the way Ciel's face twisted with pain. Usually watching his prey squirm and struggle and scream amused him, but not this time. His sadistic nature couldn't extend to this human.

Soon enough, though, he found himself forgetting to care about the person he was killing. There was blood in the demon's mouth, a human soul in his throat- nothing else mattered, not when he had starved himself so long.

It was only once Ciel went quiet, his cries ceased and his body still, did Sebastian open his eyes and come to his senses.

The first thing he noticed was the boy's eyes. They were glassy, staring straight at him. Sebastian brushed them closed, achingly gentle, with his thumb.

"My lord?" he said softly, but no one answered, since a soul was needed to do that and Ciel no longer had one.

"What is it?" Ciel snapped, rubbing the sleep from his eyes. He had never been an early riser.

"I was wondering . . ." Sebastian cleared his throat, suddenly feeling uncomfortable. "Do you have feelings for me, my lord?"

Ciel's eyes popped; he was wide awake now. He flushed pink. "W-What?"

"You said some . . . interesting things in your sleep last night."

"I- I did?" Horrified, Ciel venomously shook his head. "What do you take me for, an idiot? Of course I don't have feelings for my demon butler . . ."

The pressure was growing behind his eyes, now. His vision was hazy, but he knew nothing would come out of it. Demons didn't shed tears.

At least his hunger had subsided, temporarily. But he wasn't . . . satisfied.

Numbly, he reached for the corpse's hand, slid off the cerulean ring, and settled it on his own finger. Now that its true owner had died, it seemed to have been drained of its former beauty, the lovely blue now dull in color. Sebastian brought it to his lips and kissed it.

"You were the most interesting of them all, Ciel Phantomhive." It was the first and last time he would ever call the boy by his given name. "If I wasn't what I was, I'd mistake this feeling as love."

F I N

(Disclaimer: I do not own Black Butler, nor do I own any of its characters. Also, if you couldn't tell, the italicized paragraphs were past memories of the two of them . . . I'm really sorry if it wasn't clear, my fault there. But thanks for reading!)