Posted originally on the Archive_of_Our_Own at https://archiveofourown.org/ works/719747. Rating: Explicit Archive Warning: Underage Category: M/M Fandom: Kuroshitsuji_|_Black_Butler Relationship: Sebastian_Michaelis/Ciel_Phantomhive Character: Sebastian_Michaelis, Ciel_Phantomhive Additional Tags: Shota, Puberty, Theology, Frottage Series: Part 2 of Adolescing Stats: Published: 2010-04-02 Words: 2186 ****** Adolescing Part II ****** by a_big_apple Summary In which Ciel acts like nothing happened but is quietly stewing and Sebastian is still baffled by humans but makes an important discovery. Notes Quick trigger warming for some brief implication of past sexual abuse. If the young master feels any shame or regret after the impromptu lesson in masturbation, he doesn’t show it. In fact, he shows no feeling out of the ordinary—life returns to the standard routine, as though there had been no deviation, as though Sebastian had never stroked between those gangly legs at all. For the most part. The body-shyness is replaced by indifference bordering on denial; there is no acknowledgment of erections in Sebastian’s presence, though their frequency increases steadily. After the young master has been put to bed, Sebastian stands just outside the door and listens to the sharp breaths and fluttering sighs, the startled gasps and frantic rhythm of sheets and skin. He does not hear his name again, wonders why he is standing there listening for it, and after a few nights of this he surreptitiously places a little jar of lotion on the bedside table for his master’s comfort. Ciel gives him no orders, and Sebastian chafes, wondering why? and when will he… and why does it matter to me, anyway? *** “Tell me about Hell,” the boy asks one night as he sprawls in the bath. “After our contract is ended, will you return there?” “Most likely,” Sebastian replies from where he stands a suitable distance away. “Hell is a place like this one—only not. You wouldn’t like it there at all, bocchan.” “I don’t imagine so.” The little master glances over at him with inscrutable eyes. “But you like it there? Things in Hell are…good for you?” Sebastian’s mouth quirks up. “You could say that.” “Then my soul…when you consume my soul, that will be good for you.” There’s something in the boy’s tone that sends a little trickle of suspicion through Sebastian’s thoughts, but he answers honestly; he will never lie to his contractor, though he may not always say everything there is to say. “Yes. All souls are good for me.” “Why,” Ciel asks quietly, “did you choose to bargain for mine?” “It was you who called me, bocchan—” “But it was you who offered the contract.” Sebastian pauses, trying to put into words the sensation of his little master’s call, the fire in that soul that drew him like a moth. “I could see that it was…unique. Worth pursuing.” Ciel gives no acknowledgment of the reply; he stares hard into the middle distance for a long moment, then stands. The boy is hard again, as he so often is these days, and Sebastian ignores the straining appendage as he scrubs the cotton along his master’s skin; when he reaches the boy’s narrow hips, Ciel stops him with one slender hand. Sebastian glances at his master, and the boy steadily holds his gaze. In a smooth motion he takes Sebastian’s hand and the towel both, slides them between his legs to press them against his swollen cock. “I require further assistance, Sebastian,” he says without any trace of embarrassment. A frisson of…something spikes through the butler, and his chest contracts oddly. He shifts his long fingers just a little, and though his master’s cool bearing doesn’t change, a flush of pink rises in his cheeks. “Yes, my Lord.” “Sit,” the little master commands. “Wouldn’t the young master be more comfortable in his own—” “Sit.” Sebastian sinks to the tiled floor and leans back on his hands, thrown off- kilter; where did the skittish colt of just a few nights ago disappear to? Though this stern master is more like normal, there is something off about the blankness of his expression, the even tone of his voice. The child (though he doesn’t seem much like a child now) kneels, then crawls astride Sebastian’s lap, pressing his naked erection against the crisp folds of the butler’s trousers. “Do you feel pleasure the same way humans do?” And then he rocks his hips once, twice, setting a slow rhythm with only marginally more grace than that first night Sebastian watched him hump a pile of pillows. “My…body functions in the same way yours does, bocchan,” Sebastian answers, though it’s not really an answer, and his voice is suddenly hard to find with that modest hardness rubbing against him. Ciel seems to accept this response, and leans in to lay his forehead against Sebastian’s shoulder. He is used to having this child in his arms, though not used to it being Ciel’s idea, and his hands come up automatically to cradle the boy; one curving around the back of his still-wet head, the other low in the small of his back. Ciel presses closer, his fingers clenching in the back of Sebastian’s shirt, and then the only sound in the bathroom’s echoing expanse is the patterned shifting of skin against cloth. Sebastian is too perplexed by all of this, and too riveted by the lanky body wrapping itself around him, to find any words; anyway, he’s sure his voice would not come out as he wants it to. He feels his own erection blossoming between them, feels keenly the layers that separate skin from skin; this is not quite how it was with other humans he’s bedded in his time. This is something new, like a cord inside him that runs from chest to stomach to groin is tightening, twisting his insides together. His young master must feel the hardening length between them, too, and he thrusts more urgently against it, alongside, sometimes missing and pressing into the hollow of Sebastian’s hip. Small fingers tighten on the butler’s shirt; Ciel’s quick, huffing breaths bounce about the room, magnified until they fill Sebastian’s head. Gloveless, the butler can feel muscles shift under the skin of the child’s back; he can feel the tensing of his thighs on either side of Sebastian’s hips. He is, in spite of everything, still a child; it doesn’t take long. He comes with a stuttering cry, limbs jerking like a marionette; Sebastian holds him gently, always gently with a master so frail, and his palm brushes the tight satiny skin of the brand seared into the boy’s back. Ciel stiffens; he sucks in a harsh breath through his nose, then without warning he plunges his hands down between them to tear open Sebastian’s trousers and pull out the erection they hide, wrapping his slim fingers around it and stroking inexpertly. All moisture leaves Sebastian’s mouth; his head spins at the touch of those small hands along an appendage the butler had never paid very much attention to before, and he chokes out a startled word. “Bocchan?” “There are other things, right? There are other things besides rubbing and touching, there are other places to touch, I know the things men can do with boys like me,” Ciel hisses into Sebastian’s shoulder in a rush. “I remember, I remember the other things, teach me those, Sebastian!” Through the haze that his charge’s sweaty palms on his cock are creating, Sebastian processes this order (and it is an order, but not of the usual strength; the contract merely niggles at him) and senses something wrong. He still is not quite sure what the wrongness is, but he is certain that the young master is not himself. “I don’t understand, bocchan,” he husks into the fair hair that tickles at the side of his neck. “Humans do not generally seek pain. You do not generally seek pain. To teach you such things would be painful for you.” “I remember!” the little master shouts, and the sound jolts Sebastian a little further out of his haze. The body in his arms is trembling; his master’s voice is strained with emotion, though what emotion still eludes the demon. He holds the child tighter. “You saw,” Ciel cries. “You wanted my soul because you saw it was already stained, it was already filthy enough for Hell. I can make a good meal of myself for you, Sebastian, a damned thing that will be good for you, if I can do nothing else with this wretched life then I can at least be worth your time!” The strange clutching feeling in Sebastian’s chest tightens and his lungs seem to empty of air. It’s good that he doesn’t require it to live, but he’s forced to suck in a little, sharply, to speak. “I fear you’ve misunderstood, bocchan. I did not want your soul because I saw stains on it. I would not still be by your side if you were not infinitely worth my time.” “You’re lying,” the child cries, with something akin to his usual petulance, but harsher, pained. “I do not lie,” Sebastian replies automatically. Slowly he is beginning to understand, and he presses his cheek to Ciel’s hair. “You think…you fear that you are damned. You fear that the acts you suffered that drew me to you, and the things you have commanded me to do, are black marks on your soul.” The demon smiled a little, letting a thread of amusement slide through his tone. “How foolish. You don’t understand what demons hunger for at all, do you?” Ciel quivers like a violin string in his arms, and makes no reply. “I do not hunger for Hell. I am Hell; Hell is in me. I carry it beneath my skin, always.” He pauses. “Do you know, bocchan, what a demon is?” Still the little master does not answer, but the set of his body and the quiet of his breathing are attentive. Sebastian lets a little brimstone seep into his voice. “A demon is an angel who Fell…and all demons hunger for the light they have lost.” He lowers his mouth to Ciel’s ear. “I wanted your soul, my little master, because when you called to me, broken, sliced apart, caked with the leavings of humans with souls worthy of Hell…when you called to me, you still tasted of Heaven.” The child pants with the exertion of this revelation; Sebastian suspects that any moment, he will fly into a rage of denial, will call his butler a liar once more, will try to erase the knowledge from his memory. Humans are good at hearing only what they wish to hear. Ciel is good at pretending he cares not a whit for divinity. Then the thought that this child should so vehemently disbelieve his own worth sinks home in a way it never has before—Sebastian finds he does not want that. The thing in his chest thumps painfully. It must not happen. The hellfire flows out of the demon until he is a butler, this child’s butler, this child’s guardian, and he presses his lips to the child’s bent head. Ciel shudders; he curls, he wraps himself around Sebastian with a vice grip, he presses his face into his butler’s neck, and sobs. *** Later Ciel’s eyes are puffy and red, but there is a freshness about him, as though the flood of tears has washed him clean. Sebastian sits on the edge of the bed and reaches out to tuck an errant hank of hair behind his master’s ear, and Ciel smiles. The thing in his chest squeezes; now that the excitement of the night is past, the sensation is more distracting than he would like. He presses three fingertips against his chest, grimacing. “What’s the matter?” Ciel murmurs with a little frown. “Nothing to worry you, bocchan. An odd pain.” “In your chest?” Ciel’s frown deepens, and he lays a hand against the place Sebastian was pressing. “Demons aren’t prone to heart failure, are they?” The butler snorts. “Heart failure?” “Well, isn’t chest pain usually heart-related?” “Hmph,” Sebastian replies noncommittally. “It isn’t that sort of pain. I have a perfectly healthy heart muscle.” Reassured, the young master yawns hugely. “You say that so clinically. The heart isn’t just a muscle.” Sebastian raises an eyebrow. It’s not like his charge to criticize for being too precise. Ciel blinks, clearly losing the battle with sleep. “The heart is…where things live.” “Things, bocchan?” “Like….” He yawns again. “Emotion things. You told me you do feel emotions, Sebastian.” “Well, yes,” the butler replies, “but I do not think they are related to the heart muscle.” The child snorts. “Give me your hand.” Sebastian does. “The other one.” Sebastian does again, and Ciel presses his palm to the seal of their contract. The connection is immediate, and strong; Ciel watches him with keen eyes and a slightly smug little smile, and Sebastian lets his master’s will flow through him. Then suddenly Ciel’s smile softens, and Sebastian can feel it—an ache, a squeeze, a painful thing in his master’s chest that matches the one in his own. “Will you kiss me, Sebastian?” the boy asks quietly; it is not a command. “Will you kiss me the way you would kiss a lover?” What? Sebastian is baffled by this transition, but he is in the habit of obeying, so he leans down to catch his master’s mouth with his own. Ciel’s lips part just a little, and Sebastian sinks a fraction deeper into him. The thing in his chest throbs. Oh. Oh. The thing—his heart—throbs. Please drop_by_the_archive_and_comment to let the author know if you enjoyed their work!