A/N: First Kuroshitsuji fic! Woo! And so, naturally, I unleashed all of my convoluted ideas on Doctor Faustus and Paradise Lost and applied them to innocent (ahem), unsuspecting anime. Sprinkle with a garnish of shipping, and we're good to go. Enjoy.

Spoilers: for the first episode of season two. Note that this does, however, take place before the last few episodes of season one, but that much is at least reasonably obvious.

(In other news, I think Alois is the newest addition to my mental list of Fandom Darlings. And who can blame me? He's like the impossible lovechild of Marik Ishtar and Lelouch de Lamperouge, with a sprinkling of Mello and added sociopathy or something.)

A demon may be best likened to a high-functioning marionette – or, better still, a machine: an intricate mass of perfect, whirring cogs, all clicking systematically in conjunction with one another. With the exquisite simplicity of any skilled mechanism, they operate according to a binary function: firstly, to obey one's master; secondly, to obey oneself. These, above all, are the key tenets of demonhood – obeyed by one's own volition, and yet ignored at one's peril. A demon is alternately subordinate to orders and to appetite – but, above all, not slave (never slave) but master.

This is the first and foremost demonic contradiction; the primary law that is both irrational and immutable.

Love, pity and morality are not applicable. That is not to say that they cannot occur – for nothing is impossible where there is both sentience and sapience – but simply to assert that they do not matter. Love and hate are not the natural conclusions of good and evil. They are simply the weapons. Nor is the battle between creation and destruction. These are simply the means. The battle is, and has always been, between obedience and rebellion – all else may be reduced to aesthetics. (There is, arguably, some significance in aesthetics.)

Demonic logic is governed by irrationality – which, like anything, follows its own contradictory laws and structure. To reject the eternal and bathe in the brilliance of the ephemeral sublime; to bear solemn witness to the exquisite desperation of the fall – that is the demonic ideal.

No rules are absolute. But the majority are observed regardless.

Much to his discomfiture, Ciel realises that he would very much like to kiss Sebastian.

Unthinkable, the idea. Inescapable, the fact. (Oh, contradiction.) So very unnatural (devilish) and so very human (pathetic) that it is a veritable masque of taboo and absurdity.

And the central complication is as follows: Sebastian cannot lie to him, unless ordered; Sebastian cannot disobey. And yet, thinks Ciel - buried under all that deference, there must be some flicker of an I. Like everyone, that damned creature must possess some semblance of an identity; for the very essence of sin is the recursive hell of the self. If there is no self, there is no hell; it all centres on identity – so where is Sebastian's? Scrawled somewhere between the blank leaves of an open book?

Ciel sometimes berates himself for his idiocy. Sebastian is laid bare before him – and to search for some half-concealed glimpse of truth and the absolute would be folly. Nothing lurks below the surface, for there is no surface – itwas stripped away long ago, and with good reason, for what could be simpler to comprehend than the clean polarisation of good and evil? Sebastian has told him everything he is, and there remains nothing left to tell. Sebastian is always honest. He has no choice in the matter. He hides nothing because it is impossible; he possesses nothing to hide.

What thoughts seethe below the surface of one who cannot lie? What defiance can sizzle, dying against the storm, for one bound to obey?

There must be something beneath that desire to destroy, devour – and it cannot simply be hunger. Sebastian asserts that he is simply a butler. A demon and a butler, nothing more; and the two are inextricably linked. He exists to serve, and starve. He has no self; there is no essential I, for there is only servitude and selfishness: two sides of a resoundingly hollow coin. Asceticism and excess are really no different, in the end.

He is, definitely, thinks Ciel, with a wry chuckle, 'enthralled to self' – enthralled to his own appetite; devoted, in the end, only to his hunger. And yet, for now, he possesses no self; he exists to serve. When the time comes, he will cease following orders, impelled only by unshackled cravings: a torrent of bestial primitiveness, unchecked by authority and restraint. It is anarchy enslaved, is all, and there is nothing concealed in between the dichotomy. Black and white are merely shades - there can be no colour along this spectrum: nothing comes from nothing comes from nothing.

This is nothing so animalistic as desire. This is about those countless moments when Ciel, after being flung to the safety of the ground, feels Sebastian's face edge close, closer to his; the proximity so great as to be tangible. Amidst the dizzying panic of those situations, something entirely different emerges, eclipsing confusion with an inexplicable certainty, and numbing shock with a panicked glimpse of the chaotic absolute. This is about that one time he weakened and bid Sebastian to stay by his side until he fell asleep: stay, please stay, please... This is about hope, and doom, and safety, all mingled; emotions which merge and pool into one dense shade of blue, so dark as to be black. This is about the glimmer of something that flashes between them; the spark kindled by the friction of gaze against gaze; the moments of total, all-encompassing complicity. Those brief incidents of unity, and co-dependence such as silence.

He ought to swallow his anxieties, give up the ghost and simply ask Sebastian if a demon could ever understand anything besides the mechanical savagery of hunger, or if this complication, this – extra – is simply his imagination. He has asked far more searching questions in the past, after all, and has always been rewarded for his audacity by enigmatic little pearls of information, casually let slip from flawless fingertips. Yet he falters, and for once, curiosity fails him, for he does not want to know (and here comes the self-disgust, for his own weakness angers him) – he is terrified of the answer. To be answered would be to abandon all pretence at logic, and consequently, amount to acknowledgement; it is far better that the matter remains formally unresolved.

Ciel cannot initiate anything genuine. If, for instance, he were to say stay – please stay – and kiss me, it would amount to nothing more than another order – there would be no I involved, for Sebastian would be compelled to comply. If he simply kissed Sebastian, the order would be implicit, and thus the deception would flower. Sebastian cannot kiss Ciel; cannot do anything when there is no corresponding command; to entertain the notion would be to expect a lifeless marionette to dance unbidden. Any action of Ciel's cannot help but trigger an elaborate, empty ruse – one which would wound to the point of madness.

There is no flicker of I between Scylla and Charybdis; there is only the whirlpool's vortex and the monster's beckoning howl. There is only the thunder of rain against tattered sails, the slam of the wind on weakening timber, and the inevitability of immanent shipwreck.

Ciel lives for the transient, but only if it is worth the irrational sacrifice. This is not worth a thing. It is weightless; inadvertent and inconvenient.

They allow the paradox to stretch between them, like some colourless mockery of a red string. They clothe the latent I in their respective duties, and shield the approaching threat of we in sharp, acerbic banter. Coruscating rejoinders that flare into unexpected warmth – when Ciel remembers: this is what it feels like to want to smile, and this is what it feels like to suppress it, and experience the happiness overflow as a result. And yes, it is self-contained. But in the whirlwind of words, there is a faint frisson of connection.

In the way they share quick, impish jokes, fraught with double meanings and irony.

In the moments where Ciel mutters "damn you, you idiot" – for, really, there is never a time he wishes to kiss Sebastian more than when he calls him an idiot; it is worryingly uncontrollable.

Not in the saccharine, close-lipped smile; that spells only duplicity. But in the honest, appreciative, open-mouthed smirk – certainly. It amounts to the truth revealed in a hairline crack.

In the occasions where Sebastian is gentle.

And he exhibits so much care that it complicates the dichotomy. They tease, and engage in displays of wit, repartee – almost flirting, Ciel imagines some would call it. A shielded aside to counter the staunch impossibility. An excuse. Evidence. Ghost in the machine. Satanic self-delusion, like something out of Milton. They both thrive on fantasy - liquid dreams, fevered imaginings and wisplike flares of sudden authenticity are their sustenance, deliriously insubstantial.

The issue is unambiguous, but they challenge the tired answer nonetheless. Challenge it with wordless refutations that don't count, not really, so they are allowed to stand for now – tacit and liminal. There is the hopelessness - and then there is the secret extra. Ghostly, it wanders the manor halls at night, and whispers alluring, incomprehensible falsehoods that echo along the spacious interior.

We have a problem, you and I. I think you realise. Yes, yes, I know. Impossible? Sure. But it exists nonetheless.

There ought to be nothing poised between selfish on the one (gloved) hand, and self-effacing on the other – and, true, in reality, there is not. That does not prevent it from existing outside the established rules. The paradox is glaring, audacious and utterly unavoidable – with (and here, frustration sets in) no possible hope of resolution.

Demonic logic has never added up. Fuse it with something so abysmally human, and the result is a grotesque amalgamation of the worst in both: twisted, sprawling – and inexplicable.

Alois de Trancy decides he will be maddening.

Funny – he once purchased tolerance, for a price nothing short of infernal. Now, he wishes for nothing better than to shatter it. Honestly, that blank mask of calm unnerves him more than he can say (entrances him more than he can safely admit) and he would like nothing better than to tear it from that face – rend the veil; split clouds with lightening. Stamp on a smooth sheet of snow; send ripples across the glassy surface of still water – it can all be reduced to the same quintessential motif. The destructive impulse, which, in itself, depends on creation. And creation, in turn, is slave to destruction; all things are subject to decay.

It isn't as though he is afraid of what lies beneath.

No, but after a while, he doubts his own power to demolish.

The demon is able to withstand, disregard – even forgive– the truly awful. The repulsive, the wicked, the presumptuous... nothing appals; very little startles. No single act can rupture whatever sphere keeps them enclosed together; nothing dreadful holds much meaning for a creature of assured evil. Trouble is, very little moves, either. Alois spends an intolerable amount of time feeling wholly irritated – and, other times, wholly uninteresting. Oh, he bought attention, all right – forbearance for his whims; a dutiful screen to address – but he forgot to purchase appreciation.

So he will tease, and goad, and needle – a perplexing combination of winsome and wild - and damned if he won't find the crumbling point of that marble patience. All things are made to be broken - tranquillity in particular.

Alois wants to stretch the tension taut to breaking point. And when it snaps, he will pull at the pieces, until that elusive, mythical shimmer of emotion that must exist is left with no hope of staying hidden. He will coax it out. Force it out. Take their illicit non-games to the extreme; play at understanding and eternal fidelity, and somehow, in the midst of well-understood pretence, trammel it into reality by sheer force of will.

No orders. Merely provocation.

One moment, he is soft, and wilfully beguiling – the next, harsh and predatory. Colour. Faint hope. A moment's blush. And despair. Oh, despair.

He alternates between capricious and savage, and then wails don't leave me with beautiful, heedless abandon. Not a single whim is left unrealised; he is invincible – and oh so powerless, oh so frightened. Power and weakness and power and weakness and the flick flick flick of fragile cards, reversing, and righting themselves, and reversing once more. The motion makes Alois giddy, drives him mad – sends him teetering, head over heels and heels over head – switching from slave, to master, to slave...

So he falls back on his spider-web safety net: destruction.

He topples glasses; cracks dishes; shatters mirrors. He takes delicate, shimmering chains of jewellery – holds them up to the fading light, and look! they glisten – and crushes the soft gold, forcing the gems to burst through the shackles of their claw-like settings. He aims a few half-hearted kicks at the furniture each day; scuffs his shoes; leaves a subtle little trail of devastation in his wake. And – hah! – in doing so, he forces Claude to forsake his nature and be creative, constructive. After all, evil is supposed to negate. Evil is linked to the death wish – the longing for total self-assertion, total annihilation. And Alois forces Claude to repair. Delicious, the irony; he could laugh and laugh and laugh...

And sometimes his little moments of audacity are rewarded. Some well-aimed pinprick of aggravation will elicit a violent tug at his shirt front – and, uncontrollably, he tumbles forward. I've been waiting for this. Waiting for it all to snap. Pulled millimetres short of Claude's smooth, smooth face, and the sultry, whispered murmur: "I can hardly wait to devour your soul." Sharp edge of threat, swathed in tissue-thin silk. Strength clothed in meekness – but temporarily bereft of its garment in those instances. These are moments of indescribable beauty, in which the soft mask of benevolence cracks, and the cruel motive is laid bare. Shock and revelation.

Alois will allow himself a lopsided smirk, push tantalisingly closer so that their gazes, if not their cheeks, brush – and he will purr: "Time's not up yet, Claude." Ensuring that his warm breath grazes at Claude's parted lips – leaving a faint, intangible, human trace - swiftly, he will twist away.

Claude loves to watch him play with fire, and Alois loves the game itself: the game which is inextricably bound to Claude's own response. Circularity. Burns, upon occasion. A flame-forged co-dependency, of sorts.

Scarcely enough.

One time, he is seated at the table – neatly clad in his idiosyncratic lost-soul regalia – and tired of routine, sick of the ineluctable monotony of breakfast. Decorously served, and treated like china by other, lesser servants. Alois is all for the eradication of schedule. He longs to fill his days to the brim with the shocking, the impulsive – the unpredictable. Terror! Even terror beats boredom.

"Claude," he calls, punctuating the imperious summons with an imperative snap of the fingers.

And, immediately, the room is flooded by a third, unnatural presence. A lovely black stain on somniferous white. Ah, welcome corruption!

... Welcome, you.

A flicker of steely blue eyes, and Hannah is wordlessly banished.

Gold into black. Purity into despair. Innocence into – ah, shut up already.

"Your Highness?" Dutiful. Oh so dutiful. Tch. With adequate enough concern – indeed, a little more than is adequate, which, in turn, is enough. Enough to aggravate the slumbering monster of hunger and longing that curls and knots its way somewhere along Alois' chest and throat.

Sweeping a careless hand across the tablecloth, Alois stands. Advances. "Unbroken things are sickening, wouldn't you say?" he demands – never taking his eyes off the glint of light on stainless glasses.

A noncommittal blink from the damnable statue.

"Because," Alois elaborates, unperturbed, "you're always wracked with the burden of preserving them. And secretly – secretly – you don't even want to. You want to break them yourself. You want to bring things to a close. Doom everything – because you can, and you will, and, of course, you must. Because what's so special about something unbroken? Only that it makes you want to reduce it to the same as everything else: trash."

Another step forward, and his left hand flies to its usual, comfortable position about Claude's collar. Starch, and silk cravat, and show some emotion, you wretched automaton. "And once it's gone, it is the same – so why bother in the first place? The desire is irrational," Alois states.

Using Claude as an anchor, he swivels gracefully on one foot, until he is facing away. He leans back, gently nestling his head at the demon's throat, tucked neatly under his chin. See? It's not symmetry, but we fit.

The silence stretches – palpable and ineloquent.

"Say something," Alois commands, shattering it.

A fraction of a pause. "All desire is irrational," murmurs Claude – and the soft words seem oddly abrasive. They cut with a certain degree of resonance.

Alois flinches. "True enough," he says, with an instantaneous scowl.

Deftly now, he twists the light, serrated knife that he liberated from the table out from under the sleeve of his free hand. Surreptitiously allows it to twirl across his fingers. Then, blindly, he draws it back, and brings it down in a miniature arc – "Ole!" – right through the ironed shirtfront and in between Claude's spider-elegant ribs. Ah. Flesh – surprisingly firm, but perhaps not for marble – provides unexpected resistance, and the knife plunges perhaps a few inches, no deeper.

Rather less elegant than he imagined; considerably more unpleasant.

A sharp intake of breath scrapes across Alois' ears. He twists his head, fractionally, to face eyes alight not with shock, but vague amusement. Slowly, Alois withdraws the blade, examining it – and the bright crimson streaks of decoration it has acquired – with considerable interest. And he grins, hastily, lest audacity might give way to unease. Claude remains steady, unfazed. Alois did not expect it to hurt him, but he had not anticipated perfect composure, or utter invulnerability.

Scarcely a tremor shakes him. Barely a ripple of shock. Alois may as well have caressed, not stabbed.

Claude plucks the knife from unresisting hands and holds it slightly aloft, out of reach. Close to Alois' ear now, he murmurs: "You can rage all you like, Your Highness." He takes his master by the shoulders and swiftly spins him round so that they are face to face. Leaning to Alois' level, he cups his jaw in cool, bonelike hands. Heat into cold. Rage into calm. "You need not worry about destroying me." An involuntary shiver, beautiful.

Alois' smile softens into something halfway genuine. "I know," he sighs, doubts momentarily assuaged. And then, because the moment has lingered a fraction longer than wisdom would advise, he ducks away, severing the frail connection.

Ciel occasionally finds himself wishing for eternity.

Alois often longs for death.

Above all, he is defined by consuming hatred.

Above all, he is defined by love, devouring love.

If he could but fly...

If he could but rest.

Sebastian flouts the rules by subterfuge.

Claude is the very model of a machine; he might have created the rules, given the assiduity with which he follows their dual protocol.

A flicker of empathy? Understanding? I?

Identity counts for little if it is wholly self-contained.

In the end

it is all equally illusory.

To leap from contradiction to contradiction, soaring above the mire of doubt and dichotomy; to reside in that chaotic, uncharted midpoint between two emotions; to blend opposites whilst keeping their structure and independence intact – thatis the demonic ideal.

To wrench truth out of fantasy – that is closer to human.