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scribbleseas · 2 months

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Straight Laced, Chapter VIII: To Be A Keen Observer…

Description: After the London’s Royal Ballet company’s prima ballerina goes missing within a string of mysterious disappearances among the ballet’s young ballerinas, you finally get your chance to debut in the leading role, taking on the position’s physical toil and immense social pressure. Although this role was supposed to be your grand jeté into the spotlight, it is quickly complicated when these disappearances catch the eye of Ciel Phantomhive — the Queen’s Guard Dog. He is a captious and shrewd man who also happens to be one of London’s most eligible bachelors.

For enough profit for you to secure your freedom for the first time, Lord Phantomhive double casts you as both his accomplice to solving these dancer disappearances and… his pretend lover. While debuting as London’s new prima ballerina, you must perfect a brand new routine: deceiving all of the nation’s polite society while actively searching for a serial killer — all while being an immigrant from France with a dancer’s reputation.

What could go wrong when you realize this off-stage performance of yours may not be an act at all?

Story Warnings: detailed description of gore, pain, and violence, detailed death, smut & explicit sexual scenes, allusions to non-consensual sex, objectification, prostitution, allusions to under-aged prostitution, smoking, drinking, eating disorder tendencies (food restriction, frequent references to wanting to maintain a certain weight, over-practicing & exercising), infidelity, fake courtship, swearing

Author’s Note: I have nothing to say for myself, besides thank you so much for reading! And thank you so much for sticking with me. I’m sorry about that last cliffhanger. (Kind of.)

Dan

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MASTERLIST

November 10, 1895

The British Museum

The Yard. The press. Throngs of pedestrians fleeing from the museum to catch a glimpse of the chaos. Flashing lenses immortalizing Maisie Stannard’s bleeding body, craning necks, overlapping questions.

“Lord Phantomhive, Lord Phantomhive, who’dunnit?” someone demanded, sick comedy in their voice.

Now the public knew. They no longer had the benefit of a quiet investigation.

The Same Night, Hours Later

Ciel’s Estate

The evening’s fiasco was practically the worst-case scenario for any crime scene, Ciel thought, staring into the lively orange licks of flames in his fireplace. The contained inferno crackled, demolishing the kindling Finny packed inside moments before their return.

The fall night was brisk, the draft blowing against his window, causing balding tree branches to scream.

Finally left alone, the Earl of Phantomhive loosened his tie, slouched behind his desk, and allowed his fingers to knit in his dark hair. He released a frustrated groan he’d long been holding, spat out a curse he’d long bit down in the face of the curious public. They wanted to construct a story that would attempt to broadcast Ciel’s shock, but he would never give them the satisfaction of witnesssing a Phantomhive plan go awry.

Still, the predicament was an embarrassment. He wanted the killer to be William, but the suspect never truly felt proper—even as he watched the Yard escorted the man in handcuffs. He’d merely convinced himself William was completely guilty because it was the most convenient solution, and that was worse than a confident response being wrong.

Ciel’s eye strained from analyzing the list of guests from the gala. The names and titles were forged into his brain, and yet, how could he stop? Another person was dead because of his shortsightedness. It was a smear on his name and reputation, one far worse than courting a prima ballerina.

At the end of the day, he should have known better. It was too convenient for the killer to be William. Ciel doubted he had much of a capacity to kill—not the intellect, not the bravado, and not the motive.

Was he a violent criminal who took what he felt he deserved no matter who he hurt? Certainly. But was he intelligent enough to poison a young woman slowly using dimethylmercury? To lure a young woman to a bridge and dispose of her in the river beneath? Not to Ciel. He had to be missing a significant part of this investigation. What could he be missing? Who could he be ignoring?

Someone had to have known William’s crimes against members of his company, and plotted to frame him. The death had to be connected to the rest of them—too convenient to be a coincidence. Y/n knew her. They were both part of the same company— rivals, even. All of the dancers were a part of this company, at one point in their short-lived careers. Even the victims who were working somewhere new during their time of death or the last day they were seen, worked under William at one point in time.

Y/n said that the incidents all seem to take place on Thursdays, Fridays, and Sundays. Days where the full company rehearsed The Nutcracker in full, and Natasha was occupied with costume fittings. The company was in its last two weeks of playing Swan Lake and now it was preparing to welcome the holiday season with the festive ballet. It always had a popular run, causing it to start at the end of November until the weekend after Christmas.

That couldn’t be a coincidence, either. Ciel thought it incriminated William because it ensured that his company— including his wife — would be at their most distracted. Perhaps, the real killer assumed Ciel would draw that conclusion. They would have needed to break into William’s South Hampton home to plant the weapon used to kill Janet Fischer, as well. It seemed that estate was the only property William left unkept.

“I’ve brought your tea, my Lord,” Sebastian said, his habit of breaking Ciel’s focus entirely too common. The Earl knew better than to be startled by his demon butler. After all, the being was at the mercy of his orders. They both knew the terms of their contract intimately well: Sebastian obeyed all of Ciel’s commands and once they apprehend those responsible for the deaths of the previous Phantomhive heads, Sebastian could consume his soul.

“How damned am I, Sebastian?” Ciel asked, half pressing for what the butler made of tonight’s accident and half assessing the damage dealt between him and Y/n, given that the butler had just delivered her a night snack. She was never one to hide her feelings, surely giving Sebastian an earful about how Ciel managed to offend her. Uncovering just what had sent Y/n into her tirade beckoned at Ciel more than he liked, distracting him even more than the investigation was. The prima ballerina was so nonchalant about her promiscuity; could their relations have truly meant that much to her?

Did she feel an inescapable sense of dread and thrill around him, too? A spark so addicting that all she could do was be near him? Just like a good sip of that sweet wine she adored.

“What are you referring to?” While the butler poured a cup of tea, he lifted an eyebrow at the Earl, questioning him. A knowing smile pulled at his lips.

“Don’t you play dumb. You know whom I speak of.” The irritation in Ciel’s voice filled the room.

Sebastian merely chuckled at him. “How do you think making an enemy out of the Norfolk duchy by refusing his only daughter would end for you, sir?” His question was anything but accusatory— amused at most. Curious to get an idea of Ciel’s honest priorities: the wise match, Caroline and her presumptuous mother, or the correct match. The prima ballerina. His prima ballerina, as they worked so hard to make the public believe.

Except, they didn’t understand how much Ciel was just as much her Earl of Phantomhive.

All there was in polite society was Gwen, insisting she and Caroline come to his estate for tea. A meeting he was far from in the position to reject, out of respect to the current Duke of Norfolk. Ciel should have put a formal end to the slow beginnings of courtship he’d hinted to Caroline. At the time, he felt there was nothing to end, since nothing had really begun.

Had the Norfolk line not been in jeopardy, Ciel doubted Gwen would have continued to pursue him for Caroline with such insistence, especially after he announced his courtship of Y/n. Without a male heir, the duchy needed to secure its new duke by marrying Caroline to a suitable noble. The position had been attractive at the time, but now, Ciel hardly felt the appeal. Instead, he intended to tell Y/n that Gwen invited herself to the estate for tea after she forced him to share a cordial dance with her daughter, but Y/n fled the ballroom before he could.

“I could withstand it. And if I could not, you would see me through,” Ciel insisted, turning his gaze back down to the names on his newest list of names— a compilation of suspects with motivation to either kill company ballerina Maise Stannard or the wife of a plagiarizing artist with a legion of enemies. “Unless something changed in our contract within the last seven-some years?” Ciel prompted, scowling at the supernatural being.

The side of Sebastian’s mouth twitched. “Of course not,” he confirmed, “though I may not be able to shield you from the wrath of a woman scorned. Those dangers are entirely different from one another, you’ll come to understand.”

Such reflecting over his personal life was a painful waste of effort. He needed to prioritize his thoughts. Another person died, dammit.

The distinction between company ballerina Maisie and wife of conman Maisie was critical because it decided whether the serial killer was bold enough to kill in front of a high-end gala lined with security or if one of Stannard’s enemies was sending him a message.

Ciel’s eyebrows knit together, unsure if Sebastian was referring to Y/n or Caroline. He cared significantly more about the former. Though, it was only fair to note that Y/n never made her intentions clear enough to be shunned in the first place. She was enigmatic, and beautiful with a puzzling charm— Ciel would’ve had to be daft to ignore that about her. But that didn’t translate to wanting him beyond physical companionship… at least it hadn’t until she confronted him.

Though he couldn’t help but wonder: didn’t Y/n know better? Didn’t she understand that she was deserving of someone who could love unconditionally. In what world could he? Ciel couldn’t even promise never to lie to her.

All relationships and promises in Ciel’s life were conditional. He was a self-serving man—the remnants of the disturbed boy who returned to the land of the living seven years ago with a ravenous demon counting the days to the end of their contract. If Ciel couldn’t even promise to never lie to Y/n—how could she expect him to love her? Did she love him?

There was no loving him. Not without letting it destroy her life. They both knew that. And yet… he had already given into his passionate whims with her. He’d already decided to throw his reservations to the wind, the last of his resilience shattering like glass when she broke into sobs caused by him.

“I thought I was protecting her,” Ciel replied simply, taking a drink out of his hot tea. He welcomed the scorching burn as it traveled down his tongue. The warmth filled in his empty chest. ”I did not scorn her.”

It didn’t matter if she loved him, nor did it matter how he felt about her. The consequences of anything more than a partnership between them would be immeasurable no matter what, but he was more than equipped to handle them.

Could Ciel justify trapping a ballerina in a life where the rest of society would remind her that she was an outsider every day? Gwen and Caroline were the least destructive instance of the social persecution Y/n would face for climbing the social ladder so ambitiously as the rest of the world would see it.

When the world looked at Y/n, they didn’t see her natural aptitude for investigation, her intelligence. Her humor. They saw the misdeeds put upon her by forces much greater than herself. They saw the reckless apathy that was placed on all ballerinas, and assumed that it was their own fault.

No one would see the regard in Y/n that Ciel took so long to notice. They misread her. And they would never care to read her properly until it was too late.

Until she condemned them in a tearful diatribe across the street from the British Museum. That spirit was what convinced Ciel that she had the potential to feasibly manage. If such was the life she truly desired for herself.

“Go get another history on Maisie Stannard,” Ciel ordered Sebastian, wanting to be left alone again. He felt the demon attempting to dissect him, and it was suffocating. Sebastian hadn’t even deigned to reply, merely looking at him with unconcealed amusement. He liked watching Ciel wrestle with such foreign conflict, provoking him for sport to further insult the injury— there was nothing insightful he wished to add.

“Yes, my Lord.” After a disingenuous bow, the demon was gone.

November 11, 1895, The Next Morning

Y/n’s Rehearsal Studio

“No,” Y/n’s irritated voice snapped the moment Ciel opened the door of his own estate’s practice room and let himself inside.

Rehearsal studio, rather.

He released a sigh that he’d been holding from the moment Mey-Rin told him that Y/n would be absent from their breakfast table. He knew she would make a childish effort to avoid him, but in all honesty, he lacked the time and the patience to entertain it.

Y/n sat in the middle of the room in a nude leotard, her legs fanned open on either side of her. Her back was straight and elongated, forming a perfect line with her neck. It looked effortless. All of her movements looked light and easy, despite the rage that her pursed lips and creased forehead displayed.

She didn’t need to turn around to look at him. Instead, she ignored his image in the floor-to-ceiling mirror’s reflection in front of them. Ciel had to read her expression from the glass, since she purposely kept her back to him.

Ciel caught the variety of materials sitting between her spread legs, several pairs of newly broken in pointe shoes in a row, scissors, adhesive, and a needle and yarn for sewing. They were the same items Y/n used to break in and darn new pairs of pointe shoes for balance and comfort. Ciel knew this routine well— it cost him hundreds of pounds a week to purchase Y/n five or six new pairs weekly.

“Y/n, we have much to discuss. Skipping meals with me will not put an end to the investigation… nor our personal differences,” Ciel told her, carefully stepping closer with the caution a soldier would in a minefield. He supposed a rehearsal studio was just that for Y/n: a battleground.

“All I wanted was a few hours away from you and your investigation. You cannot even give me that?” Y/n corrected coldly, giving the shoe in her hand a hearty smack against the expensive flooring to further break it in. Apparently, all ballerinas had to make their own custom alteration rituals to break in their shoes the exact way they needed it. Y/n liked to eviscerate her shoes’ insoles and shave down the bottoms, stretch the shoe, repair it with adhesive, and darn the flat bit of it.

His investigation? So now it was only his?

“It is not a crime for a ballerina to break in her shoes—I hardly have time as it is, and Nutcracker opens next week,” she continued, still refusing to look at him. She seemed satisfied with the amount of pressure she put on the shoe and squeezed adhesive into its stretched interior.

Of course she wouldn’t look at him. Ciel embarrassed her because he let his preconceived notions about her professions blind him to the extent of her feelings. Ballerinas like Y/n were not inherently promiscuous, and he, despite having one functioning eye, missed that she felt more for him than lust. In what world does a principal dancer fall for a jaded Earl, anyhow?

And he was somehow even more blindsided by his own intricate feelings for her. It was most likely too late. And that was for the best, wasn’t it? It was supposed to be, but the guilty discomfort that sat in his stomach insisted otherwise. It was simply too late.

“The last time I checked, a certain prima ballerina always insisted it was our investigation,” Ciel replied, watching Y/n’s eyes roll in response.

“Clearly, she did not know what she was talking about,” Y/n put her sewing materials and pointe shoes to the side once she was satisfied with the layers of adhesive applied. She continued facing the mirror, spreading into a center split and pushing her torso to the floor in a deep stretch. “Being wrong about so many things makes a person a true lavette, no?” Her stretching position muffled her voice somewhat, but the vitriol was clear to him.

She was comparing her intellect to a dish towel? Honestly? Ciel fought the urge to reflect the prima ballerina’s scornful eye roll to her.

After all, she purposefully referencing both their investigation and their personal matters— enough to show Ciel that there was little to be achieved with the stubborn ballerina at that time. The blows were too fresh.

“What is there for us to discuss, anyhow? That guest list will take ages to sift through, and Sebastian’s interview notes…” Y/n rolled her shoulders back and sat back up only to inhale and bring her torso back to the floor. Her arms stretched in front of her, showing off the sculpted muscle she forged through dance.

Her leotard clung to the trained muscles down her back and arms, causing Ciel’s mouth to run dry as he adjusted his trousers. (Unintentionally recalling her body’s warmth and strength under his fingertips did little to help.)

That realization caused Ciel to moisten his lips, quietly thankful that Y/n was pointedly averting her gaze from him. She would’ve caught and translated that pensive— scandalous — look in seconds, and rightfully called him out for it.

“I want to visit William today,” Ciel managed, barely maintaining his stable tone in the face of his straying thoughts. “The Yard said the bullet found in Maisie was consistent with his Winchester collection. And I still dislike that the Southampton house is William’s only unstaffed possession.” It was all too convenient. Too connected— down to the murders matching the company’s rehearsal schedule.

Even the gala was on a Nutcracker rehearsal evening: a night where it was guaranteed Natasha Wood had her hands full and the company was half alive after such a rigorous day.

“That sounds like the perfect plan, Lord Phantomhive,” Y/n answered bitterly, extending an arm over her head while she leaned to the side. She still had her legs parted in a center split.

Lord Phantomhive was a gut punch. It took all of his composure to hide his crawling discomfort. That had to be the first time he recoiled from the weight of his surname.

To her, he was Ciel. She had seen to it— demanded it, even.

“You can handle that on your own. He will not talk with me there, surely,” she added, her bored tone causing his fingers to curl into a frustrated fist at his side. Finally catching her stare, he noticed that her eyes were bleary as if she had been crying. Even her lips seemed bitten.

Ciel had to ignore the striking urge in his body that begged him to kiss her. Now that he knew her prowess, the way she moved her lips with the same elegance she did the rest of her body, it made her allure all the more intense. So much so that they forced Ciel to skip several heavy seconds before replying to her poor excuse for not wanting to be in the same room with him. He had been occupied with admiring her.

“I would prefer—” he started to object, only for Y/n to interrupt.

“Please see yourself out. I must rehearse, I am running on borrowed time as it is. The last Swan Lake showing is tonight,” Y/n said expectantly, assuming Ciel didn’t know her performance schedule. He merely happened to have committed it to memory.

Y/n rose to her feet. She was already wearing an older pair of pointe shoes, suggesting that she had been practicing before deciding to break in new shoes.

Having risen from the center of the floor, she took graceful steps closer to the mirror, fully turning her back to him as she put herself in the starting position for the Sugar Plum Fairy Variation. After putting in hours of labor as her unpaid pianist, Ciel could recognize those soft, exaggerated steps anywhere.

His stomach only twisted into a tighter knot, offended that Y/n would prefer to rehearse in complete silence than in his piano playing. After all, she once told him that she couldn’t keep time without it.

In unexpected surrender, Ciel closed the door behind him, softly letting the knob click back into place.

It was simply too late.

The Same Day, Hours Later

Scotland Yard’s London Headquarters

Even for a man living in a holding cell, William Wood did not look well. His facial hair, what was formerly a tasteful goatee, was now untamed and slightly overgrown. Deep exhaustion carved bags under his eyes. His sudden fall from grace seemed to age him years, even though it was only a week or two since Ciel made the arrest.

“They told me you’d be coming to see me today,” William grunted, dressed in plain clothes. He wasn’t formally charged yet, but Ciel and the Yard agreed that the threat of allowing an arrested serial killer to remain free before his sentencing was too great to risk. Ciel also needed easy access to William in the event they were wrong.

The criminal’s gray eyes attempted to bore into Ciel’s soul, but really, they were tired. Unfocused. Desperate. He reminded him of a cornered tiger— too proud to submit, but too exhausted to finish the fight.

“Yes… I have questions that demand answers. From you.” Ciel answered carefully. He exchanged a look with the officers guarding the door, silently urging them to clear their throats and seeing themselves out, guarding from the outside of the room. William’s holding cell sat in an isolated room from the rest of the headquarters. The basement was fortified with cement, making the area drafty and dark.

He wouldn’t reveal the news that there was another murdered ballerina, but there were other means to extract the information the situation required.

A condescending smirk twitched at William’s lips, unsurprised. “And you expect me to talk? To you?” He asked, his jubilant tone dripping with malice. “You’ve ruined my life, my wife’s…our livelihood.”

“No one forced you to cheat on your wife. Or assault defenseless young women. Or murder them in cold blood,” Ciel snapped, raising his tone. Natasha, from what Y/n said, was running the entirety of the company without William in the first place. She didn’t need him— he was a pathetic excuse for an heir to a business. That had to be clearer to her than anyone.

Only now, he made her work infinitely more complicated. Especially since the body of Maisie Stannard was plastered all over the front pages of most newspapers that morning, each depicting the mysterious murder that occurred near one of the side entrances of The British Museum.

“You don’t talk about my wife to me,” William’s fingers curled into fists at his sides as he took a step closer to the cell’s bars that separated them. His complexion was shades lighter. “I never killed anyone, either,” he was sure to remind Ciel.

“You will answer my questions, one way or another. How much of your blood gets spilled depends entirely on you, William,” Ciel replied, appreciating the cell wall that separated them. One of them was vulnerable, and it was certainly not him. It would never be.

The Earl pressed the nose of his Nanget Revolver into William’s hip, sliding the nose of the weapon between the bars. He smiled at the defeat that fought the stubborn ferocity in William’s colorless irises, placidly putting the weapon back into his jacket pocket just as smoothly as he’d taken it out.

“Do we have an understanding here?” Ciel asked impatiently. “I am only interested in the truth.”

It was exhilarating to watch the desperate fire extinguish in William’s face, the fighting militance in his shoulders dissipate. His fists unfurled as he sighed, coming to terms with his defeat. He was just smart enough to understand that concept— a lesson Ciel and Y/n fought hard to teach him.

“It’s not like I have a choice,” the former businessman crossed his arms, ignoring the weapon that Ciel threatened him with.

“Your Southampton house,” Ciel started, “why is it unstaffed? When was the last time you were there, before you instructed Y/n Y/l/n to meet you there?”

“I told Natasha I sold it, but it’s been my family’s for generations. I used the place for… meetings I didn’t want her to know about,” William sighed, choosing his words cautiously. “That time with…Y/n… was the first time I’ve been there since my trip to France. So I haven’t been since the end of September. Do I get to know why you’re asking?” He asked sarcastically.

The last time Janet was seen was September 27th.

“When did you leave, William?” Ciel asked with a newfound sense of urgency overriding his frustrations with the man. His mouth was dry, his heartbeat picking up. “Do you know the exact day you departed?”

William shrugged, either not noticing Ciel’s pique or not caring. “September 28th, probably? Early morning.”

Is that enough time to murder a woman— she was projected to have died late that night — hide the murder weapon in Southampton, and return to the London ports by dawn to leave the country? It wasn’t.

”Did anyone have access to your property? Anyone?”

“No one should have. I only… asked my wife to dispose of hers, after I told her I sold the property,” William frowned. It seemed it was only dawning on the careless man that his wife might have lied to him, curious as to the lack of official documentation from the sale, any shift in finances, given the major role in managing their company, according to Y/n.

“She wouldn’t… think I still use the property…” he mumbled the afterthought slowly with disbelief.

The more Ciel asked of William, the more of him and Natasha he understood. They fell in love because she transferred from a ballet school in Russia and starred in a company production of Sleeping Beauty. William was still learning how to run the company, one of the investments out of a larger corporation, but he fell in love with Natasha, the prima ballerina, at the time.

Natasha overworked herself in the role, causing a hip injury to end her professional career only a year into it. And that was two years ago. Now she was the company’s director—nothing like the inspired dancer she once was, William insisted.

He lost sight of his love for the young ingenue because the injury killed her. What was left was a completely different woman. Tired, bitter, frustrated from what she lost...only for her marriage to slowly decline the more she lost herself.

Opportunity, motive…was there a means? It was now of the utmost importance that Ciel found the answer to that question. No matter how Y/n would feel about his investigating Natasha, her mentor. Ciel trusted his instinct—the tugging in the pit of his stomach. The alarm that he felt.

How could he not have seen it sooner? He needed to leave. He needed to stop her before she left for her performance.

It took a frenzied carriage ride through the crowded London streets, but Sebastian’s demonic carriage driving managed to put Ciel in front of his manor just as Y/n was leaving for the opera house. He was always chasing after her, it seemed, but he didn’t care.

For her, he would. She would, for him. Or before he broke her heart, she might have. He was too late, in that regard, but he could stop her here and now.

“Y/n, stop, this is important!” Ciel stumbled out of his carriage, having stepped out of it before Sebastian could stop entirely. He had to intercept her.

The ballerina scoffed at the nerve of him, begging her to stop in her tracks and hear him out for the second instance in a row. At the same time, Ciel demanded that Finny keep Y/n’s carriage stationery for the moment through a brief look, causing his gardener’s superhuman grip to tighten on the horses’ reins. He gave Ciel a resolute nod, his jaw firm.

“What? Is this chasing a daily occurrence?” Y/n quipped bitterly, just as Ciel expected her to. “You have never cared to attend one of my performances before,” she accused, adjusting the strap of her bag on her shoulder. Her hand fell still on the carriage door’s handle, frowning at him.

“I have reason to suspect that Natasha is—“ he started gravely, pronouncing his words carefully. He knew what Y/n would say, but he could only prove this theory with her help. If Ciel was right, one misstep could make them the adversaries of one incredibly violent, envious, and dangerous criminal who played the role of a wistful, wise mentor. And played it well.

Immediately, Y/n’s face reddened, defensive. “Stop,” she insisted, her voice hoarse. She turned the handle on the carriage door, causing Ciel to reach out and grab it himself, his hand engulfing hers.

He needed her to approach this logically.

Y/n’s face jerked to look at him, her hand attempting to move with the same speed, but Ciel’s grip kept hers stagnant. She gave their hands a long, hard look.

“You have no idea what Natasha has done for so many of us, how little I would have without her. She would never do this to any of us,” Y/n’s voice wavered.

And what has she done for you? She allows men to abuse you. She encourages you to skip nourishment to maintain some shallow aesthetic. She hasn’t reported any of these missing cases to any of you—

“—She does not know about them!” Y/n interrupted, wide eyed, tears threatening to fall. He had said that out loud. “I would not have this opportunity without her. I have known her for years. You, I have known for? A month? You care about me as much as she does? At all?”

“I care about you more than you know, Y/n,” Ciel replied, trying to keep his voice measured, in spite of his pounding heart. He could feel his pulse racing.

“You do not.”

“I do.”

“Then you show it by dancing with another woman in front of me? By inviting her to your home where I live as a guest the night after we were intimate?” Y/n asked, tears rolling down her cheeks. Ciel’s stomach sank. That was what had caused her outburst at the party: Gwen had lied to her. He didn’t invite the duchess; the duchess had invited herself.

His crime was failing to properly refuse her at the gala. Ciel intended to send his regrets the following day by insisting he had an overseas meeting.

“I did not invite the duchess and her daughter. Gwen seems to have lied to you,” he said, the force behind his words extinguishing. “I realized… that… I don’t want my marriage to be a business venture. I don’t want Caroline to be my Countess—I’ve hardly ever spoken to her! I would want…” he let his next word hang in the air. It filled the few centimeters that separated them.

You.

“I need to leave now or I will be late,” Y/n’s free hand wiped away another tear that escaped her tired eyes. “This is my last Swan Lake performance, Ciel. Please.”

She didn’t believe him. And he didn’t blame her. He had warned her about himself a long time ago.

Every instinct in Ciel refused, but he released the hand that he held stagnant on the carriage door handle. “Fine. You may,” he sighed, exchanging the same look with Finny. Y/n opened the carriage and sat inside, closing the door in his face. Again.

“Sebastian, this is an order. You will protect her as you would myself. Now go. Stay out of sight unless the situation demands it.”

In the meantime, Ciel could escort himself to the performance. He had a chance. No way in hell would he let himself squander it.

The Same Evening

The Royal Opera House

For the entirety of his life, Ciel was a keen observer. He could see through a liar’s carefully constructed facade by a glance, the bravado and charismatic grace that Y/n enlisted to maintain her confidence. The Phantomhive empire was as prosperous as it was because of his ability to read and interpret those around him… and manipulate them accordingly.

Now, all of his expert focus fell on the prima ballerina, just as blazing and intense as the spotlight that illuminated her.

Until this point, Ciel avoided attending Y/n’s performances because they knew they were spellbinding. He was more than aware of her talents—even watching her mumble through her moves as she rehearsed was enchanting. He had pointedly refused to allow himself the indulgence necessary to freely watch the woman act in front of an audience, encapsulating a character through mood and movement when he had grown so accustomed to admiring her individualism.

Rather than tell her so, he’d only insinuated that he was too occupied to attend these performances, despite her frequent invitations. Selfishly, he used to prefer her subdued look of disappointment than run the risk of her noticing the way he fell for her. Without meaning to. In fact, while actively trying not to.

Her raw pain was clear as she depicted Odette grieving the prince’s betrayal, having fallen for Odile’s impersonation of her. It wasn’t unlike her face moments before she stepped in the carriage in order to fulfill this very performance, or even her expression in the studio, or in front of the museum the night before. She channeled her hurt into her work—just as he did. She evolved with each step, every twist, in spite of him. Because of everything he put her through.

The bouquet in his tightening grip crinkled, the decorative paper around it crumbling from the frustration he let out on it. Ciel could hardly hear it over the orchestra in the pit, the assortment of musicians and their quality instruments masterfully recreating Tchaikovsky. But that wasn’t the most impressive aspect of the show— that recognition belonged to Y/n entirely.

He had to correct this gnawing worry in his stomach. The feeling that he was, once again, on the brink of being too late.

The moment the curtain drew after the company’s final bows, Ciel sprang from his seat.

He wouldn’t be too late. At the very least, he owed Y/n that.