Posted originally on the Archive_of_Our_Own at https://archiveofourown.org/
works/4604136.
  Rating:
      Explicit
  Archive Warning:
      Underage
  Category:
      M/M
  Fandom:
      Kuroshitsuji_|_Black_Butler
  Relationship:
      Sebastian_Michaelis/Ciel_Phantomhive
  Additional Tags:
      Dubious_Consent, Possessive_Behavior, Vignettes, flashbacks_to_Ciel_being
      10, Sexual_Abuse, Child_Abuse
  Stats:
      Published: 2015-08-18 Words: 3651
****** Tamed it in the Rapture ******
by objectlesson
Summary
     If Ciel had any idea what falling in love felt like, he might say it
     feels like falling in love.
Notes
     This is just a short jumble of vignettes exploring themes of
     possessiveness/owning one's soul/ losing oneself. I'm very turned off
     my possessiveness in my real life. Funny how hot I think it is with
     these two? The title is from a Depeche Mode song, wow, I am full of
     surprises. Thanks to Chickaddddd again for the beta job! <3
     "It was you that took my soul
     And threw it in the fire
     And tamed it in the rapture
     And filled me with desire"
     Depeche Mode, Goodbye
When Ciel gave all of himself away to the smother of darkness and sulfur, he
could not know what it would mean for him, for his future. He had been
desperate and grief-maddened, all of ten years old as he reached and reached
for whatever might be there in the shadows to take his hand.
He didn’t even know what a soul was back then. It seemed like something
separate from him, something important, certainly, but all at once too distant
and abstract to grasp the gravity of giving up. He would have given Sebastian
anything he asked for (so little has changed, he thinks bitterly sometimes,
reverently others,) but even then a soul seemed like a small price. It was not
something he could see or hold or mourn the loss of. It was not even something
he thought about having in the first place.
Selling his soul was not like exchanging pennies for an apple at the summer
festival on the Thames, it was not like handing Lizzie the first buttercup of
spring and getting a kiss on the cheek for it to wince under. It was nothing
like the small, insignificant barters and sales he made as a young child, back
when soul was just a word and he had not yet seen darkness, nor smelled sulfur.
---
The church they’re in is burning, the rafters beginning to cave in with a
deafening crunch. Ciel cannot breath, the smoke too thick and acrid, he can
hardly see ahead of him as he stumbles, weight braced upon his walking stick.
Before the ceiling gives way and he is crushed beneath the weight, Sebastian
sweeps in like a flood. He uses his own body to cover Ciel’s from the rain of
fire and ash hailing down upon them, blotting out the flames with a spot of
infinite darkness.
Ciel reaches for him instinctually, dizzy, chest aching from breathing soot-
thick air. He is relieved when the devil comes for him: that is his curse, his
solace. It is futile to fear anything when hell itself protects him from the
fire. It is who I am now he thinks simply and helplessly, clutching for
Sebastian. This is what it is to be damned.
He makes fists in Sebastian’s waistcoat, burying his mouth in the fabric to he
can breathe through it as he’s lifted, gathered, carried. Sebastian is the only
solid thing in the whole crumbling room, the whole crumbling world, and Ciel
clings to him, coughing.
They make it outside just at the church collapses to a heap of smoldering
timber behind them with a sound like cracking bone.
---
Now Ciel knows, to some degree or another, what exactly it was he gave
Sebastian so easily, so willingly, so imploringly. The sheer immensity of their
trade. Selling his soul feels like becoming wet clay to shape, a sandbox for
black hands to dip inside and build castles. It feels like giving up the master
key to his bedroom, to his interior. It feels like having his skeleton
shattered and rebuilt in ebony. If Ciel had any idea what falling in love felt
like, he might say it feels like falling in love.
It doesn’t matter because it is irrevocable, irreversible. Ciel would have
given Sebastian anything he asked for, even if he had fully understood the
magnitude of the price when he was ten years old, terror stricken, gazing
heavenward from a mask of blood. He would have done anything, and so he did.
And so it is. Sebastian’s mouth is the grave he chose, there is nothing he can
do but lay in it. Losing his soul is a truth. Ciel can either mourn it, or
accept it. He makes a point, when he can, to revel in it instead.
---
Sebastian’s fingers brush down Ciel’s cheek, the muted scrape of his gloves
razing from his temple to the line of his jaw. Ciel grits his teeth against it,
fights the terrible wave of heat which rises behind him, poised to fall and
drown him in its fury.
“You’re quite chilled, young master,” He murmurs. The second knuckle of his
index finger presses into the thrum of Ciel’s jugular, sinister and insistent.
Ciel shivers, trying to turn his head away from Sebastian but instead turning
into him, towards him, like a bird caught in cyclone, feathers reduced to bone
and tatters. He grinds his teeth as Sebastian continues, “Shall I warm you up?
You will certainly catch cold if you remain like this.” His lips skirt up to
corner of his mouth, tongue flicking out over the softness.
Your cheeks are like snowdrifts, Sebastian told him once. So pure and white and
smooth. Such irony, when you know the blackened, rotted earth which lies
beneath winter’s snowfall. It made Ciel wonder what his insides looked like, if
the absence of his soul had somehow corrupted his flesh, making the muscle and
bones beneath the layer of pale skin ugly and inky, like the lungs of a life-
long opium smoker.
Ciel twists into Sebastian’s grip, even when he is trying to get away. There is
something magnetized in it, something so alien and irresistible he does not
even realize he is tilting towards the flame, until his skin is already singed.
---
Sebastian has all of him, the soul being the biggest slice of his selfhood, the
artichoke’s heart, the soup bone. After giving that piece away, it seems
pointless to fight the smaller, more insignificant pieces as they dissolve away
like salt into water. Ciel gives them up, one by one. You have my soul, so
here’s my humanity, as well. After all, what’s humanity without a soul? Here’s
my shame. My body. My dignity. My autonomy. Take them all. He denies the loss
of these things in his waking moments, but when stripped to the bone tangled in
sheets and nightmares, he knows. He knows there is nothing left that is truly
his, save for his revenge, perhaps, when he has it.
Ciel has only just turned eleven when Sebastian teaches him to relax his body
so that it hurts less. He is all broad, hot hands carding through his hair,
breath heavy and scalding and wet, thumb smoothing the creases through Ciel’s
cheeks and brow each time he grimaces at a new burst of pain. I have your soul,
so give me your shame. Your body. Your dignity. Your autonomy. After all, they
are mine now. Just like the rest of you. Sebastian tells him, teeth elongated
into sinister points, eyes casting the sheets in the somber hue of blood.
Ciel gives up, inch by inch. It seems like nothing to let Sebastian take this,
too, when he has taken everything else. It seems like nothing to want this,
too, when Sebastian is all he has ever wanted, the revenge which is his last
possession on earth.
---
If he goes long enough without it, he becomes disgusted with himself, with the
memory and knowledge of it. He thinks of the things he has done with Sebastian.
Loathsome, filthy things he didn’t even know were possible, things that leap
over the line between fucking and that unspeakable world of shadow beyond it.
He thinks of them, and his guts twist like a sailor’s knot, salt-caked and
wind-tattered. He’ll grow sick if he thinks of them too long in these
circumstances, so naturally, he stops, shuddering with disdain and trying to
forget, vowing he will never submit to such depravity again.
That was the last time, he thinks, as if he is in control of his destiny, as if
his soul has not already been laid claim to. The last time.
And then, because Sebastian knows things no human can and lives to play with
his food, he will storm in and lay it all in the ground, all of Ciel’s
resolutions, all of his attempts. It doesn’t take much. A single kiss,
sometimes, and Ciel will remember why he does this, why he can’t stop.
The truth is that it’s perfect. Sebastian is but glamour and magic, a lie
fashioned from Hell to suit every one of Ciel’s needs, every wish and desire
and craving. His lips are always exactly what Ciel is silently and secretly and
shamefully longing for, whether or not he knows it. Sometimes they are but a
dry, papery brush, and it is exactly what he wants, exactly perfect. Other
times they are a fierce, wet slick of heat, the threat of teeth behind the
softness, and still, that is perfect too.
The kiss (and whatever follows) is always the answer to the unspoken prayer
Ciel’s insides have been spelling, always enough to rend open Ciel’s composure
and overthrow the pledges to which he’s committed. Oh he always thinks, heat
washing over him and making a fist in his stomach, hands clutching madly for
Sebastian’s shoulders, his hair lest he get washed out to sea. Oh.
And with Sebastian touching him, he cannot doubt. He cannot even think. He just
kisses and kisses, sucking hungrily for his demon’s lips, stunned by how
terrifyingly, absurdly good it feels. Ciel will grow weak and fluttering in his
arms, and when Sebastian pulls away it is often with a smirk, a complacent
twist in his lips at the way Ciel follows him, whimpering, needing more of the
thing he keeps attempting to swear off.
 
---
Sebastian is vast in the way the night is vast, the way the sea is vast. A
suffocating weight, an endlessness which stretches beyond Ciel’s visible
horizon, on and on and on, into invisibility. He cannot fathom all of
Sebastian, the immensity of such a creature, all the years he has lived and
souls he has swallowed, all the bones he has used to pick those pointed,
perfect teeth.
His human form helps, but Ciel is constantly aware of the lie in it. Every time
he touches Sebastian he longs for more, thinking, what am I really touching?
What lies behind this, beneath this? What can’t I see? Sebastian’s real self,
ethereal and shadowed and as menacing as any nightmare Ciel had ever imagined
as a child who could not sleep, has taken his breath away each time he has
beheld it.
Ciel thinks of it often, desperately wanting to see it, wanting something to
happen which would force Sebastian to shed his butler’s mask and rise to his
full glory before him, vast like the night, vast like the sea. However, when it
does happen Ciel’s insides turn to ice in silent terror, his body a conflicted
mess of dread and longing. He fears Sebastian’s truth as much as he has desires
it, and he desires it more than he ever thought possible to desire something.
Sebastian fills the room, spills out the windows and into the earth, upended
ink, tar and feathers and sorrow, no longer Sebastian as Ciel knows him, but
something entirely different, something ageless and ancient and awful. Ciel
holds his breath, though he desperately wants to inhale it. He stumbles into
its arms, though he desperately wants to evade them. He lets it kiss him with a
cold black tongue, though he desperately wants to choke.
---
Ciel lies on his back, his hands over his mouth to keep the parade of moans and
gasps inside. He doesn’t like making noise, but he always does. He can’t help
it; no one could. Sebastian is a demon, he does everything as an artist does,
inspired. There is nothing in the whole world which will ever compare to his
work, to his perfection. Ciel is ruined forever. All human experience will pale
in comparison to the inhuman, compared to being Sebastian’s most exquisite work
of art. Sebastian fucks like fucking is composing, and Ciel is his grandest
symphony.
Hands rubbing up Ciels stomach and thighs, Sebastian plays him like an
instrument. His head is bent between his legs, which are spasming as they hang
over the edge of the bed, gathering and tensing, heels coming to rest on
Sebastian’s shoulders before they kick messily into the air once again. If the
heat of humanity feels good, then Sebastian’s heat is hotter. If the slickness
of humanity feels good, then Sebastian’s slickness is slicker. There is no high
higher than this. He is ruined in having felt perfection.
It is something he grieves by daylight, but never by darkness. Not when he’s
sliding down its throat. He tightens his hands in Sebastian’s hair, too soft to
be real, too smooth and too black. Staring at it is like staring into an
inkwell, something that swallows and transforms all the light. He arches off
the bed and into Sebastian’s mouth, the maddening suck of it, head thrashing
back and forth as he swallows his own screams. More than once, in this
position, Ciel has thought, this is heaven. Of course, the thought always comes
crashing down on him when he realizes the absurdity of it, and he must
remember, no, no. This is hell.
He laughs into his palms, a stifled sound of mourning. Then, Sebastian reaches
up, taking his forearm in one hand and forcing it to the mattress before doing
the same to the other, demanding Ciel’s swollen lips touch air, dragging his
sounds out into the darkness.
Ciel comes, ears ringing with the sound of his own voice filling the room, torn
around Sebastian’s name, over and over, beseeching.
---
It infuriates Ciel to be robbed of his dignity, his pride. He infuriates him to
be robbed of anything, yet here he is, bound to a contract which robs him of
everything. As he awakes in the middle of the night, sweat damp and panting
from dreams thick with feathers and sharp with teeth, he will place his open
palm over the frantic beat of his heart, if only to feel that it is still
there. To ensure that Sebastian has not snaked ebony talons into his sleep and
stolen that final reminder that he is alive.
He rubs his hand up the clammy span of his chest, under his clinging cotton
nightshirt. The thunder of his heart is a comforting thing: proof of his
mortality, his humanity. It’s difficult to remember that one is human, when
one’s soul has been claimed by a demon. Ciel feels himself bleeding into
Sebastian, becoming him, adopting his cruelty and his alien coldness. He feels
his face lengthening into Sebastian’s as he ages, thinning out and sinking in
beneath the line of his cheek bones. He wonders if he will look like his father
as he grows. Then he wonders if he will look like Sebastian, dually sick and
seduced by the knowledge that they are the same thing.
Ciel rolls over in his bed, skin sticky with cold sweat. He shivers and his
heart slows, his heart which may feel like his own, but belongs to Sebastian
all the same.
---
It has been this way since he gave it up. He can remember the confusing, blood-
hazy months following the conception of the contract, when he was orphaned, ten
years old, traumatized. Cradled in hell’s palms, too ruined to care that it was
cold and twisted, only that he was cradled at all. Early on, it all just felt
so good.
Sebastian would slip into his room at night when he couldn’t sleep; he would
fall over him like a black sheet, like a flood. Ciel kept himself awake at
night so that he could feel every touch and every shiver rendered by
Sebastian’s ungodly hands. None of it felt like the touch of his parents, or of
his aunt, his cousin, his physician, Tanaka. It did not even feel like the
touch of a human, as it was too vast and wonderful, wind rippling over the
Atlantic, pulling its waves into sharp white-capped points. It drove him mad
with confused, nameless craving. He was orphaned, ten years old, traumatized.
Sebastian was everything. It’s the way it was, and the way it still is.
When Ciel could hold onto wakefulness no longer, exhausted and wrung out like a
dishcloth, he would fall asleep thinking about Sebastian everywhere. Sebastian
holding him, consuming him. Sebastian spread over every surface and in every
corner of his dreams, like a sail with the wind filling it, black and heavy and
billowing. And even then, he wanted to get closer to Sebastian, as close as two
people can be, fitting into him like the stone set into the moorings of the
Phantomhive ring, which had still been too big for him to wear at the time.
Now, he realizes he has gotten his wish. Two years later he is as close to
Sebastian as one creature can be to another. He is the vacancy Sebastian hides
inside, replacing the soul he sold. He is the monument to Sebastian’s hunger,
one foot already firmly planted in the soil of his own grave.
When Ciel was ten he had been curious about Sebastian, about the skin under his
clothes. He wondered, is he like me, or like father? Or is he smooth and white
and hard like marble? Or is he warm and wet and hungry like a beast, like his
namesake? What is he like? Now, Ciel realizes he has gotten his wish. He knows
what Sebastian is like, knows the terror of his reality, all fierce black
angles held together by ash and dust, wisps of smoke. He knows the smell of
sulfur, he knows its burning touch. He knows it all. It has been this way since
the beginning, and it certainly is this way now.
---
Ciel lies in a ruin of his own clothes on the floor of his study, panting and
painted in Sebastian, who is bent over him, all labored breath as he cards a
hand through his hair. He looks very nearly human in this moment, with his
exhalations tattered and uneven as they huff out over Ciel’s lips, his cheeks
ever so slightly flushed beneath the slant of the bone. Ciel reaches up with a
tremulous hand, and touches the blood.
“What would you do,” He sighs, grimacing as Sebastian sits back on his heels
and procures a handkerchief to wipe him off. The silk is cool on his cheeks,
his throat, and he shivers beneath it. “What would you do if I died?”
Sebastian folds the white stickiness of his own seed into the handkerchief,
tucking it away neatly before doing the same to himself. He reassembles behind
the mask of his glamour, growing less human as his appearance grows more human.
It excites Ciel, makes his heart clench and flutter to see the horror of what
Sebastian truly is overtake him. “I’m assuming you’re asking how I would react
if you died not by my own hand, but in some other fashion? A tragedy I was
somehow unable to prevent?” Sebastian clarifies, shifting to a crouch beside
Ciel, eyes flashing and garnet.
Ciel nods. “Yes, you fool. If I was taken from you. What would you do? Would
you kill my killer, or simply move onto another soul?”
Sebastian shakes his head, slides his bare thumb over the seam of Ciel’s lips,
hot and salty and ashen like brimstone. Ciel shudders, stomach contracting even
though he is quite emptied out. “I would destroy two worlds,” Sebastian says
solemnly. “Yours and mine.”
“Would you really?” Ciel asks, eyebrows arched. “Seems somewhat dramatic, for a
creature like you.”
“It is only fitting,” Sebastian says with a curt nod, eyes shutting briefly
before he stands to straighten his butler’s livery out, leaving Ciel in a
sprawl upon the floor. “For a soul such as yours, young master.”
Ciel lies silent, thinking that it is a much more frightening thing to imagine
Sebastian without his soul, than it is to imagine himself without it.
---
Sebastian has Ciel’s hands pinned above his head, holding him spread and bared
easily, narrow chest heaving with wild breath. Ciel struggles, only because he
loves to feel the futility of it. He loves to feel Sebastian tighten his grip
minimally, the crushing intensity of it sending sparks of pain from his wrists
to his underarms, his fingertips beginning to tingle from blood loss. There is
nothing he could do to get away - not physically, anyway. The thought thrills
him, makes him groan wordlessly and cant his hips up into Sebastian’s, eyes
half-lidded and brimming with pupil.
“You have me,” he mumbles, feeling like he is losing a fraction of himself as
it falls from his lips. He means it to be a question, but it does not come out
as such. It’s the condition of having one’s soul compromised.
Sebastian looms above him, immense and heavy as he rocks against him, their
skin sticking and sliding together maddeningly. He thinks that Sebastian will
say yes in response, reply with the obvious truth that yes, he does have him,
he has his soul and his body and everything else which makes a human whole. But
that is not what Sebastian says. He drops his brow to Ciel’s, breath staggered
and low and animal, terrifying and feral. “And you have me,” is what he says.
Ciel’s eyes widen, and he makes an involuntary sound as the last of the air is
crushed from him. Sebastian releases his hands and they windmill to his
shoulders, gripping like there is nothing else in the world to touch. He rakes
nails down Sebastian’s back, sweat-damp and bathed in moonlight as it flexes
and ripples beneath his palms.
Sebastian comes first, his teeth in Ciel’s shoulder to fruitlessly hold back
the inhuman wail that rips out of him. His hips snap, pinning Ciel to the bed
as he spills all over his stomach, between the slick drag of their bodies. Ciel
is stunned, moved, staring down at the mess and thinking mine now. Just like
the rest of you.
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