Disclaimer: I don't own Kuroshitsuji.

A/N: Though this is more like an Alternate Reality than an Alternate Universe fic, some of the character's roles have been changed. The era and the setting are still Victorian London, however. Rated for non-explicit sexual situations, profanity and general dark themes.

He knew Luca was dead. Mr. Trancy had stopped pretending to read Luca's letters, not just because he lost interest in his own lie, but because by that time Alois would have figured out that Luca would be illiterate anyway. His parents were probably dead too. Or they were too poor to make the journey to the city, or maybe they didn't give a damn anyway.

Maybe Alois didn't give a damn either. Or he wouldn't have. But Mr. Trancy would always keep a portion of his earnings, the portion that should have been his, and say 'For Luca' as he pocketed the coins. He even used to add 'You know your brother's very sick right? That's why your parents sent you to work here, with me,' but had abandoned the allegory in favor of a more timely motion. 'For Luca' was just enough. 'For Luca' and the money he had earned was in another man's hand just like so many parts of him had been that night. 'For Luca' was what Alois said to himself when all the grunts gave way to whimpers and he found himself reeling in a world of powdered truths and even flimsier lies.

For the dead boy. For nothing.

By all the knowing clients, Alois was one of Mr. Trancy's rentboys. 'The blonde, one, I'll have the blonde one,' they'd say and he'd lift himself from the sofa, or the divan, and stand by Mr. Trancy, who'd dig his nails into his shoulder, as if to say 'this is mine. You can have it for a night, but this is mine.' And Alois would stare at his client and gauge the pleasure he'd take in and the pleasure he'd have to give, dependent on the pain he'd have to take and the pain he would give in return. Most men didn't notice the pain, but one had. He'd been a doctor and sat down and wept on the edge of the bed once it was over. 'You're just a child damn it. You're no older than my son.' And Alois placed a hand on his thigh and said, 'You paid for another round. Ready to go again?' And just when the doctor had buried himself in, half-flaccid and itching to be done with the whole thing Alois had said, 'if you picture me as your son you'll get done faster.' It worked.

If there was a thing that he was good at it was his job. It was a source of pride for him when a fellow rent boy would come back with a client, shamed look on both their faces, and the client would ask for someone better or he was reporting them to the police. 'You!' It was always him who was pointed to. And Alois would do his job, and well, and the newer boys would stare at him with cruel eyes. An older boy would laugh at them. 'They don't know. The law is sleeping with us too.' And Alois would smile to himself, and know deep down that there was no law. No Luca. No anything. Just his job, and he was good at it.

But being good in his line of work meant he was a penny above the rest of the whores, but a whore all the same.

"I've got a job for you," Mr. Trancy sat in his chair. The red one stained with ashes. It was past their busy hours, probably early in the morning. Most of the other boys were sleeping upstairs, but Alois had stayed down. He liked to sit in the main room, the room that had the guise of opulence because it was kept so dark that you couldn't see the stains on the rug or the rips in the sofas.

"What kind of job?"

"Entertaining a very important client."

Alois frowned. He didn't like vague answers. Vague answers only led to more questions and in the end and Alois had just stopped asking questions.

"How important?"

"You'll like this," the old man chuckled, though it could have easily been a cough, "He's a cut above the rest. Just like you."

He didn't take the compliment. He wasn't sure how to. "So an official then?"

"Better."

"A priest? I could have sworn I had one last week." The guy who had started rehashing sermons in the middle of it. Alois had felt special when the man called him the spawn of Satan.

"No, damn you, a nobleman." He coughed again, this time a real cough.

Alois gave a high pitched and derisive laugh. "That's all?" He stretched his legs out, his feet capriciously close to the fire. He made a game of poking his toes in and out of the range of comfortable heat and searing inferno. "I'm not surprised," he said blandly.

"You'll be escorted to his house tomorrow evening. Make sure you aren't seen."

Comfortable. Searing. "I will."

"And give him any request he asks for."

Comfortable. Searing. "I will."

"For Luca."

Searing. Searing.

"His name's Lord Faustus. Practice your manners." The old man's voice was hoarse.

Alois curled his legs underneath himself once more. "I will." There was nothing to practice. He had never learned any.

The next morning Alois told the other rent boys about his prospective client. He liked to see the way jealousy would run in their eyes. Just a flash, but it would hold him over longer than the meal would.

They breakfasted on a bench in the kitchen. It was always cramped and his elbows rubbed against the other boys as he shoved food into his mouth.

"It'll probably be a gross old man." He had laughed as he said it, but inside he felt a curling disgust. The other boys laughed with him. Some so loud they didn't hear him mutter in a cold, dark voice, "Lord Faustus, what a hideous sounding name."

He ate more of the food, an acrid taste blooming in his mouth.

The more he said the name Lord Faustus the more he saw a fat and gross old man. "Lord Faustus." He visualized Mr. Trancy, but more fat and putrid. "Lord Faustus." Hands like the blood sausages that they were fed during holidays. "Lord Faustus." Or maybe not fat at all. Perhaps skinny. So skinny he'd see the man's ribs and sallow skin sagging, engulfing him. "Lord Fau-"

"Shut up!" The boy next to him pushed. "We've heard his name enough already."

He righted himself and continued to eat, feeling a pain in his mouth. At some point he had bit his tongue and now his blood dribbled from his mouth and speckled his food red. The splatters reminded him of something that didn't want to be remembered.

The carriage arrived just as the evening rush was starting to begin. Most of the other boys were sitting on the laps of gentlemen or else entertaining their clients in separate rooms. Mr. Trancy was talking with someone, probably one of London's deviant elite when he told Alois to follow the man who was standing at the entrance. "And remember your manners."

"I will." Neither curt nor haughty.

Alois was glad to be out of the room. The cigarette smog was worse than usual and he was bored as hell with waiting.

The coachman said nothing as he led him to the carriage. The inside was dark and he almost wanted to turn back and beg for some other boy to go, though he knew it would do no good. The door was shut behind him and he was plunged into near darkness. He shuddered.

No one else was in the carriage. He had expected as much. It wouldn't do for a nobleman to pick up a rent boy in person. This carriage was probably not his main one either, probably something rented for the night. Something very much like himself.

Alois rocked back and forth in his seat anxiously, conscious of the bumps in the road. He had only rode in a carriage a few times in his life.

The first time was when his parents were sending him off to London. He had thought it would be for school.

His parents hated him. They must have. They had forbidden him to see his brother, sick in a partitioned corner of their house. They would not even let him talk through the cloth to him.

That carriage had brought him to London, sure enough, but it had arrived on the doorstep of Mr. Trancy's business and Alois had learned quickly.

The carriage stopped and the door was opened. Alois stepped out and was greeted by a handsome townhouse. Not even his most affluent clients had lived on this side of town. Alois sucked in the air, cold and clear and clean.

The coachman led him quickly through the gate and through a garden of lavender. Little spears sticking up from their bushy undergrowth. He'd seen some customers wear it in their buttonholes and laughed at the symbolism like it was a bad joke. He was led to an unadorned door at the side of the house. A servant's entrance. It seemed appropriate. He followed the coachman in.

There was something about this house. Alois had walked into many and they had always had a character that he gleaned from the nicks in the wallpaper or the meaningless trinkets on the shelves. This house had none of that. The frescoes seemed hallow and the portraits that hung on the walls stared at him with blank and lifeless expressions. Even the rugs he walked on were reticent in their muted patterns. There was something in this house that didn't want to talk about itself.

But that was fine with Alois. He didn't feel like asking. He never felt like asking.

The hallway led to a large sitting room and Alois was motioned to sit down. He chose a chair, elegant but forgettable, and waited. Just waited. He wondered how old the noble would be, if he'd request something normal or more bizarre and if he'd need to build up his appetite for an especially gluttonous client.

He had been so caught up in his thoughts he hadn't noticed the man standing in the doorway. By the looks of it this man was another servant, glasses and finely tailored suit.

"So you'll be the one that'll lead me to the Lord's chambers, won't you?"

He had the fleeting notion that all the servants in the house didn't talk, until he heard, "That is correct." A smooth voice, like breaking into the honey jar. The man turned to go and when Alois didn't stand up right away he added, "Follow."

Alois slipped off the chair and followed the man. He was led to an upstairs room, spacious though inconspicuous.

The servant shut the door behind him. "Strip," he said, honey dripping.

Alois proceeded in a hasty fashion. The lord liked his servants to inspect the merchandise, did he? He had seen it all before. His doctor-client had checked him for diseases before starting. Adequate was all the doctor had said of him. And adequate was far more than Alois had expected.

But once he was bare the servant did not leave. He merely stared, a smile curving. Alois decided that he hated that smile. It disgusted him more than any smile ever did.

"Well, what are you waiting for?" His patience with such servants always grew thin.

Then the servant moved closer, closer, deathly close and Alois realized that this man was not a servant.

"Lord Faust-" He collapsed on the bed under the weight of the other man. Hands moved everywhere, far too fast to feel anything. Fingers pressed without warning. And as his thoughts swam and muddled he felt it inside him, some foreign thing, intrusive and swelling. Something he did not want, though he didn't know why he did not want it.

Like so many other jobs Alois tried to sink to the bottom, to watch the world pass over him impassively. But he could not sink into his consciousness. Each movement of the other man brought him back to the surface, breathing hard and choking and each touch was hard and raw and unfeeling. And that thing inside him, all the time, was filling him, breaking its way through, until all he was aware of was the pain in his body and the smile on Lord Faustus's face. Something wet rolled down his cheek and he realized he was crying. Lord Faustus saw everything inside of him, shame and secrets, and observed indifferently, as if he was gutting an animal.

Alois sobbed. He wanted to tear away but there was nowhere to go. He closed his eyes but he still saw that smile. Even his most brutal clients were not as detached. Even when they'd claw at his skin, close to ripping it, he saw in them the thing that made them human, so very weak and pathetic. But Lord Faustus's eyes had none of that, like the flames of a fire they were dangerous and consuming but without depth. Alois wanted to run into the arms of someone and cry at what he was in the arms of this man, something inferior, something only to be used and thrown away, but there was no one to cry to, so he cried to himself.

And then it stopped. Lord Faustus removed himself from his body and Alois rolled over, shaking. His tears wet the bed cover as he buried into it. Inside that warm, damp place there was only him.

The maid woke him. He had been curled in the covers for hours, shaking and twisting in his sleep. Wild nightmares flitted across his mind, returning to the darkness of their own obscurity in the flashes he opened his eyes, half-awake but unaware of what world he was in.

Then the woman came and he knew he wasn't dreaming anymore.

Alois did not talk to many women. He frowned at her. She was all curves and sympathy, from a world that Alois did not know or believe in anymore.

She helped him put his clothes back on until he slapped her hands away. He didn't want anyone to touch him. He was guided by her to the same door he had come in. Lord Faustus was nowhere to be seen. Perhaps he too had faded into the darkness of his expressionless house.

The coachman was waiting for them there, though Alois thought there was something slightly off with him. He wasn't quite the same, but at that moment neither was Alois.

In the carriage he doubted the lord would call for him again. Mr. Trancy would be furious at the loss of such a rich customer, but that only meant he'd return to the lap of some dreary middle-aged man with halitosis and a love for rhetoric.

But something told Alois, something deep inside that he had stopped talking to, that Lord Faustus had ruined him.

Alois hated being Jim Macken.

Jim was the outcast in the little village. Nobody liked Jim. Nobody played with him, except for Luca before he got sick. Alois remembered. Jim had thought the roof was leaking, something wet dripping on his cheek. Luca was coughing, the fit making the bed they shared shake. "Go back to sleep." He tried to nudge his brother, but the coughing kept going. "Hey," he said, waking fully. His brother was crumpled on his side and he realized it wasn't raining. Jim wiped his face and his hand came back splattered in red.

Everyone wanted Alois. Because Alois was pure and Jim was dirty. Alois could be someone new every night for every customer, but Jim could only be hated and hateful. Alois was alive and Jim was dead.

But Alois did not doubt that Jim was there in the carriage with him, shaking. Faustus was not like his other customers, and it chilled Alois - and Jim - to think that he was any different from the many men he had been with. Faustus hadn't touched him or fucked him. Faustus had devoured him.

Mr. Trancy didn't ask, he only collected his money and went back to bartering with his clients. Alois walked through the room as if in a blur. Someone tried to grab hold of his sleeve but he brushed it off. Everything about it disgusted him. He couldn't distinguish one conversation from the next, all of them blending together in a chaos that bled and whirled and twisted around him.

He finally found a spot upstairs, a small corner in a dark, dark room. He slept, his sleep heavy and empty.

Someone kicked him and Alois, in the veil of sleep, made out the words, "You're to go to Lord Faustus's again tomorrow."

Alois tried to go to sleep again, but his mind would not slow down.

He saw scenes from his past. His father beating him for calling all the boys pigs at school. Villagers avoiding him because they did not like his eyes. They were too superstitious, those peasant villagers. His mother shooing him away from the partition where his brother slept. And all around he heard that name 'Jim', 'go away Jim', 'damn you Jim', and he didn't like it.

He crept down the stairs and found Mr. Trancy in his usual place by the waning fire, the room devoid of life except for an old, old man and young boy. A mock reproduction of the previous night. This time Mr. Trancy did not speak right away.

Alois had heard from the other boys, vicious rumors that swept around the brothel like the pox, that Mr. Trancy had had a son named Alois once. Alois had taken that name for himself and Mr. Trancy had not seemed to mind.

Mr. Trancy had married rich, he had heard. His wife had been an heiress and their son would have inherited it. But the other Alois had died and his wife and her riches had followed suit, given to another heir. Alois hadn't asked if that was the reason Mr. Trancy sat by the fire in the early morning hours, staring into it but not seeing anything, or if it was the reason he had the boys wear a long flowing robe when he wanted to test them out, fingers pulling desperately at the robe belt like unwrapping a present. Alois hadn't asked but he knew whatever Mr. Trancy had been before he wasn't now. Because it was the same for him, he wasn't Jim anymore.

"How was Lord Faustus?" The old man finally asked.

"He was quick and not fun at all." Something immense and hopeless rose in Alois's chest and he realized that the feeling had always been there: crawling inside of him every time a man looked at him and saw nothing but flesh, writhing when another boy would shove him in jealousy or negligence. But the worst was when he was alone in the dark and there was no one and he was no one and the world was nothing and that feeling swallowed him whole.

Alois frowned. "Not fun at all."

A/N: This is one of the few stories that I knew the first sentence of before I knew what the story would be about. It's also one of the few stories I outlined before hand. If you liked what you read then I'm happy you liked it, but this isn't really a story for everyone, so I can't blame you if you didn't. In any case, this story will most likely be relatively short and things between Alois and Claude will change.