A/N: This fic is set in the same modern!AU as Once Upon Never, a Claude/Alois fanfic, but since Ciel and Sebastian have their own storyline which doesn't fit very well with that narrative , it's a separate story for now. Warnings for this chapter include language, sexual references, and Sebastian's awful fantasies.

1: Blue

Few travelers are genuinely fond of airports, and Sebastian Michaelis is no exception to the rule. Airports are always too crowded, always too noisy, especially on Friday afternoons. On Friday afternoons, everyone and his brother heads out for the weekend, destination TBD. Sebastian is no exception to this rule, either—not when the weekend is three days long and he has an out-of-state girlfriend to visit.

Standing in the longer than usual security line gives a man time to think, and Sebastian is not particularly thinking of Juliet until she texts him to say that she can't wait to see him this weekend (with double exclamation points, which means she must be serious). When he feels the phone vibrate in his pocket, Sebastian is thinking of his last basketball practice, and how to improve his free throw. Everyone's got Sweet Sixteen expectations this year, and the team might be able to make it even further than that. No one can say for sure, but training has gotten intense in preparation for the first game. The coach has been holding practices non-stop, so it would be nice to get away from that all this weekend and see Julie—Juliet.

Sebastian and Juliet had gotten together the summer after senior year of high school, which was an inconvenient time when one of you is staying in state and the other one's going Ivy League. But with girlfriends, it's better to have one than not, and, Sebastian being the perfect Romeo that he was, he assured her that they could make it work. And make it work they have, at least superficially, for a year and four months. He texts her every month when that day rolls around. Being a decent long-distance boyfriend is hard work.

Juliet's text reaches him just as he's about to pass through security, so he drops his cell phone in his sports bag and resolves to respond after everything else has been taken care of. He smiles politely at the security personnel even as he removes his shoes, one at a time. The tired-looking woman with the security badge nods. She's been reading his university sweatshirt blankly.

When he's through the line, he checks his watch. Thirty-five minutes to boarding. More than enough time to grab a panini and a weak coffee from one of the airport shops and eat it before boarding.

Sebastian takes his place in line, which is, again, longer than usual, and moving at a snail's pace. He checks his watch again. Thirty-one minutes. He sighs, glances around. Airports hive this ability to make you feel somewhat insignificant—with all of the people bustling by, all self-centered—even when you're 6'1" and strikingly good-looking, as Sebastian knows he is. It's not a feeling he likes, insignificance, but it's easy to feel that way when the big man on campus is off campus, among all of the people not paying attention, the black-suited businessmen and the chattering families and the blue—

Blue.

A flicker of cobalt blue catches Sebastian's eye, and he turns his head. He isn't the only one. The blue is the color of a child's coat, and the child is one half of a pair that's attracting quite a lot of attention. Sebastian stares.

It's the woman with the child who's probably the distraction for most other people. Attractive, mid-thirties, nice figure, talking on a cell phone, nothing unusual but for her slightly-familiar face, but then—then red lips, red hair, red hat, red coat. The woman is impeccably clad in red from head to toe, like an incredibly fashionable stop sign, and it should be noted that red is not Sebastian Michaelis' favorite color. She laughs, too, as if she owns the terminal, the airport, and everyone's eyes as she hefts her red bag up on her shoulder.

Next to her, and this is, perversely, what gets Sebastian looking and keeps him looking, walks a boy of twelve or thirteen, wheeling a small black carry-on bag. His dark hair has an almost bluish sheen to it, although that could be due to the coat, that cobalt blue coat with shiny black buttons down the front. He's exactly in profile, so that Sebastian can only see his left side, and what he glimpses is a straight mouth, slight nose, large, focused blue eye. Pretty skin, too—smooth, white skin. Perfectly put together, just like the woman, walking among the other travelers as if they a goddess and her son among men. But what really gets Sebastian about the boy is his demeanor, the straight back, the effortless upward tilt to his chin. He carries himself like an adult, a haughty adult, a proud adult. Like he's distant, removed, detached, apathetic, perhaps? Serious. That attitude—

It draws Sebastian in. He wants to snap it.

Most heads turn and then turn back. Sebastian's head turns and stays turned. He can't say exactly why, but his eyes follow the boy as he walks down the terminal, towards the baggage claim. That boy—he's perfect. Like a little porcelain doll. And Sebastian's first glimpse had been from far too far away.

Twenty-nine minutes. More than enough time to get a closer look. Just a look, and that's all. Then Sebastian can get back on his plane and forget—just a look. He can just discreetly follow the boy to the end of the terminal and then turn around.

He leaves the line, and his hands are shaking, so he stuffs them in the pockets of his jeans. He can't say why the boy pulls at his senses so badly. It's not a homosexual thing, he thinks, not really—Sebastian hasn't done anything gay since middle school, and even then that barely counted. That was just fooling around when he was too young to know what gay meant. So it isn't as if he's attracted to this child, he tells himself, and yet his hands are shaking because he can feel himself popping the buttons on that blue coat one by one by one.

Shifting his sports bag on his shoulder, Sebastian starts walking quickly, but not too quickly. Soon enough, Sebastian is close enough to overhear what the woman is saying loudly on her cell phone. Something in French to whoever's on the other end of the line. The woman's accent isn't crude, but she's quite clearly American. Sebastian took a little French in high school, so he picks up…something about this weekend, but the rest is lost. Then she looks at the boy by her side and asks him something. Something about Saturday, and then—appended at the end, "ciel," which is a French word that makes no sense in context. Sebastian focuses in, the hair prickling on the back of his neck.

"Je ne sais pas,"the boy replies, copying the language almost out of instinct, and then he adds in English, "Aunt Angelina." And, adding the two together, Sebastian replays it in his mind: "Je ne sais pas, Aunt Angelina."

But Sebastian barely has time to focus on the boy's slightly husky yet-unchanged voice because he turns to look up at his—aunt?—and there's a patch over his right eye. An eye-patch. For some reason, that makes Sebastian's mouth curve into a smirk and he has to look to the side to remain inconspicuous as he stays a decent distance behind them.

Now he has a name. Ciel. Sky. Ciel. Blue, like all that blue on his coat, and in his eyes. His eye. Sebastian wonders what's beneath that eye-patch, what Ciel's hiding. He's not perfect, and that only makes Sebastian's fingers curl into fists in his pocket. Not perfect, so what gives you the right to act like, it, Ciel? You're not that removed after all.

He's quiet when he wants to be, and he thinks the sound of the wheels of the child's carry-on, rolling on the tile of the airport floor, is louder than his breathing right then. And yet he's thinking, thinking. He can't explain it, and he doesn't try to, why he wants to run his fingers across Ciel's lips and his smooth cheek and slip them under the eye patch and then snap the string and force that boy to look at him with two eyes and not just one—

From what seems like a thousand feet away, Sebastian hears the hiss of an automatic door sliding shut, and realizes he's followed little Ciel and his aunt, Angelina, back through the security gate. He'd have to go through security all over again. He glances at his watch. Twenty minutes exactly. And in the second he glances down, he loses sight of Angelina and Ciel.

His heart freezes for a moment. It's a mix of panic and adrenaline for some odd reason and he can't decide what he should do—get back in the security line? Maybe he'd be able to make his flight if he got back in the line, long as it was…but then he sees red, like a flitting cardinal, out of the corner of his eye, and he's nearly sprinting towards the baggage claim.

He gets to the top of the escalator just in time to see little Ciel and Angelina, at the bottom, walking away with a chauffer holding a sign which reads "Phantomhive." And then they disappear under the overhang, and out of Sebastian's sight. He stops himself before he can pursue them any further, because he's learned enough for now, and it's not as if he can climb into their car after them.

Sebastian is sweating, out of breath. He doesn't actually realize how heavily he's breathing until he stops moving, so he sits down on an empty bench and leans back against the cool wall, trying to figure out what the hell that was, exactly. He closes his eyes, but he's undoing Ciel's buttons again, one by one, and then he's sliding the point of a knife across Ciel's shirt, cutting it away from his body, and then his lips are on Ciel's neck, right over his jugular—

His phone beeps to remind him he has a text message waiting. He blinks, drowsily, wipes at his forehead, and remembers. The plane…his watch says twelve minutes. He can't possibly make that. He breathes slowly, one, two, before he calls his girlfriend.

Juliet answers her cell on the second ring, and Sebastian's having trouble visualizing her smile, or her long, brown hair. "Hey!"

"Hey." Sebastian's voice doesn't have half of her enthusiasm. "I know I was going to come up this weekend, but…I'm feeling kind of strange." It's not a lie. It never is. "I don't want to risk anything."

"Oh," says Juliet, and she sounds disappointed. "Yeah, I guess…you really shouldn't risk it. Especially not with that game coming up."

"Yes," he agrees. "I'm sorry."

"No—it's alright." It doesn't sound alright, not entirely, but Sebastian isn't all that concerned, truthfully. "Just do whatever you need to do." She pauses. "I love you."

"I know. I have to go," says Sebastian, and he hangs up the phone.

The weekend is three days long. Sebastian had said previously that he couldn't make practice that weekend, which gives him more than enough time to spend searching on the internet for something, anything, about that boy and his aunt.

He finds more than he thought he ever would.

At first he had searched Angelina's name—or, at least, Angelina Phantomhive—because he thought that would yield more hits than Ciel's name. He soon learns that Angelina's last name is actually Durless and that she's something of a fashionista. There are a lot of photos of her, which Sebastian ignores. He focuses instead on the fact that was the sister of Rachel Phantomhive, presumably Ciel's mother. Ciel's father's name was Vincent…

They are both deceased.

Sebastian finds himself interested in the story of their deaths, but not intrigued by it. What intrigues him is that a couple of years ago, Ciel had been kidnapped by the same people who apparently committed the Phantomhive murders, and held for ransom for three months. Articles are few, and details scant; it seems as though someone is paying a good deal of money to keep the incident out of the public eye. However, there are a couple of interviews with Ciel after the fact to be found, and they come with pictures, pictures of Ciel sitting in a chair, dressed in black, looking weary (likely for the camera) but holding his head high, as he always must.

It's inappropriate, but when Sebastian sees those pictures he thinks of Ciel again, and the haughty, defiant look in his eye, and the buttons on his coat, and pop, and then he's short of breath again and he's crossing his legs, but then he's undoing the top button of his pants and unzipping them because why the hell not and he thinks of breaking the string of Ciel's eye patch. He doesn't know what's under it. It's an entirely normal eye in Sebastian's imagination, which is rather unlikely, but it and its blue blue twin are glaring at him and he kisses Ciel's forehead even as he rends Ciel's clothing to shreds with his nails.

He thinks about fucking Ciel. He thinks about fucking Ciel and he's glad that he didn't go visit Juliet this weekend because he would have fucked her while thinking about fucking Ciel and that would have been a mess on all sides. He thinks about feeling Ciel's body shudder against his and it's because of the sex and also because Sebastian's tied his scarf around his neck and he's squeezing it tight and Ciel's gasping and shuddering as he tries to breathe and can't—or maybe Ciel's on his hands and knees, and Sebastian's taking him from behind, and he's so hot and tight inside and he's almost whimpering but Sebastian doesn't hear it and eventually Ciel's so brittle and delicate like a doll that he just snaps. Snap. And he slumps over. Sebastian comes into his hand much harder than he should.

He rolls into bed, glad to have that out of his system for good, and tries to open a sports magazine to distract himself. But he only thinks it's out of his system and, fifteen minutes later, he's at his computer again, looking up more information. An hour later he masturbates to Ciel Phantomhive's picture again, and he comes again with a terrible smirk on his lips, the image of his hands around Ciel's white neck imprinted in his mind.

On Saturday, he finds Ciel's birth date, his home address, anything else he could ever need to know.

By Sunday, he's determined to make Ciel Phantomhive his, one way or another.