Posted originally on the Archive_of_Our_Own at https://archiveofourown.org/
works/719760.
  Rating:
      Explicit
  Archive Warning:
      Underage
  Category:
      M/M
  Fandom:
      Kuroshitsuji_|_Black_Butler
  Relationship:
      Sebastian_Michaelis/Ciel_Phantomhive
  Character:
      Sebastian_Michaelis, Ciel_Phantomhive
  Additional Tags:
      Puberty, Shota, Nightmares, Snowed_In, Frottage
  Series:
      Part 3 of Adolescing
  Stats:
      Published: 2010-12-15 Words: 3119
****** The Heart ******
by a_big_apple
Summary
     In which Ciel has a birthday and Sebastian tries to figure out what
     to do with that thing in his chest.
Notes
     Written for nochick_fics for her birthday in 2010!
The heart of a demon, Sebastian is learning, is a complex puzzle. Its
metaphysical nature throws him off-balance, befuddles his judgement. Human
hearts are simple to understand given enough observation, and Sebastian is
skilled at that—but feeling the effects of his own, with no clinical distance,
is far more trying. For the most part, he attempts to ignore it, though the
young master has an uncanny ability to foil that effort with a piercing look or
a shy twitch of his needy adolescent body. Sebastian wonders if he hasn’t
created a monster, teaching the child pleasure; the boy is adept at stripping
away the cold layers of propriety between a butler and his master, a demon and
his meal.
It begins to snow before sunrise the morning of December thirteenth; ponderous,
fat flakes of white that drift through the pre-dawn and cling at the corners of
the windows. By the time Sebastian wakes the little master, the fall is
heavier, thick and picturesque, quickly blanketing the lawn. Ciel gets out of
bed, stands by the window in bare feet and dressing gown to watch the outside
world turn white.
Sebastian lets him stand and watch in spite of the draft for as long as it
takes to brew the tea, then urges the boy back to the temporary warmth of his
bed. Ciel is pliant this morning, and quiet. Tomorrow he will turn fourteen.
“Sebastian,” he murmurs into the Darjeeling.
“Yes, bocchan?”
“Please tell the servants that I don’t want a fuss. I mean it this year. If I’m
lucky the snow will keep Lizzy away, but that’s only half the battle.”
“As you wish, bocchan.”
The boy nurses his tea, and his eyes slide to the window again, blank, as the
snow thickens and seals the mansion up in quiet.
***
It snows all day and on into the evening dark, and to Ciel the white cover on
the world looks like a shroud. Sebastian coaxes the fire high when it’s time
for bed, and tucks hot bricks beneath the covers just far enough down the bed
that Ciel can’t burn his soles on them if he stretches full-length. He’s grown
a little; last winter the bricks were not quite so far toward the bed’s foot.
He feels oddly trapped as Sebastian tucks the blankets in around him, closed in
by the silent white world through the window, and it shouldn’t be as unsettling
as it is.
“Will it keep snowing all night?”
“It is possible, bocchan.”
Ciel imagines waking to the windows and doors all blocked, even all the way up
here on the second floor, the Earth drowned in snow that piles wet and heavy
around the mansion and presses in on all sides. Sebastian hesitates at the
doorway, as though he senses Ciel’s unsettled thoughts (and probably he does),
but a quiet “goodnight, Sebastian” is enough to dismiss him. The fire crackles
in the grate; Ciel counts snowflakes to put himself to sleep.
His limbs are leaden, immovable; he is buried in snow, and yet the fire
surrounds him, it leaps from the grate and slithers along the carpet, climbs
the walls and gnaws at the bedspread, and still Ciel cannot move. When he opens
his mouth to cry out, the snow fills it, gags him, blots out the sound of his
butler’s name. And around him the fire rages, reaches, lays its searing hand on
his shoulder and shakes him—
“Bocchan!”
He wakes gasping for air, almost choking on it, and Sebastian’s warm hand
presses firm against his chest as though that touch alone can even out his
breathing. It’s the butler’s steadiness that brings him back to the room, the
low fire flickering in the hearth where it belongs; his limbs are trembling
like reeds in a wind, and he grips the sheets hard and tries to remember how to
make his lungs work.
Sebastian’s presence is silent and composed, his face a mask, but when Ciel
finds his eyes they flicker with something, a fleeting look he has come to rely
on, a sudden depth that holds Ciel in place and brings his mind back to rights.
The butler’s gloved hand lingers against his chest for a long moment after he
can breathe again, then slides away. “Would you like a calming drink, bocchan?”
the demon murmurs.
“No. It was just a dream.”
“Yes.”
***
The child slumps back into his pillows, boneless, and tugs the blankets up to
his chin before Sebastian can do it for him. His mouth screws up into a
determined little scowl, and he takes a breath to speak.
“Sebastian—”
“Until you fall asleep, bocchan,” the butler replies smoothly, sinking into the
chair beside the bed. It’s come to be a habit; the little master’s nightmares
claw at him, freeze him through, and other nights the child’s hormone-driven
dreams lure the demon to his bed and the sharp scent of want. Either way,
Sebastian spends much time in this room in the middle of the night.
This time though, Ciel glares at him through the dim. “Don’t presume to speak
for me. I don’t need you to stay.”
The demon blinks at this sudden stubbornness; the unseemly organ in his chest
seems to clench and he ignores it, covers it with a tiny smile. “No?”
Ciel’s scowl deepens, and he shoves his head further into the pillows.
Sebastian’s smile widens; the child doesn’t like his bluff called. “Fourteen is
too old to be frightened of dreams.”
“As you say,” the demon murmurs, amused. “Then I will tend the fire and leave
you to your rest.”
He’s stalling, and he knows it, and yet he bends to shift the coals with bare
hands, urging the flames up a little higher in the chilly room. Ciel ignores
him forcefully for a minute or two, eyes tightly closed, but when Sebastian
reaches into the foot of the bed to exchange cooling bricks for freshly hot
ones, he peeks down at him with one eye half-open. “Do you sleep, Sebastian?”
An interesting question—or perhaps interesting that the child has never thought
to ask it before. “I can, and often do. But your call will always wake me.”
“You always look…so put together. Dressed and hair in place and here almost
before I can call you. Is that some kind of…demon thing?”
Sebastian chuckles. “I suppose you could call it that. You’ve seen my speed.”
“Hmm.” The boy seems to chew this over for a moment, then closes his eye again
and nestles deeper into his bed. On a whim, Sebastian reaches past the heated
bricks to brush the sole of one small foot with his fingertips, and Ciel
flinches into a ball like a roly-poly bug, scowling fiercely. “Goodnight,
Sebastian,” he snipes, and the butler straightens with a smile and goes to the
door.
“According to Tanaka,” he murmurs, palm on the door handle, “your lady mother
did not give birth until 11:06 in the evening. Though it is now the day of your
birth, you’ll not actually turn fourteen for nearly twenty hours.” The child
doesn’t answer, but his breath is far from the deep, steady rhythm of sleep.
Though he doesn’t move, Sebastian can tell that the boy is restless. Still, his
dismissal was clear, and he retreats, pulling the door silently shut behind
him.
***
Outside, the snow is still falling. Even in his warm bed it makes him shiver,
so he wraps himself in a blanket and goes to the window to watch it come down.
The room is too large, and the outdoors too dark and unknown; he is uneasy. He
wishes (but tries not to wish too loudly, or Sebastian will hear) that he’d let
the butler stay.
There’s nothing for it. He’s grown to accustomed to that steady presence.
Tomorrow night he will be fourteen, and he’ll cross that bridge when he comes
to it.
He’s only seen the butler’s room once or twice. He remembers it being small and
bare, below ground and without windows. With the blanket trailing behind him
like a wedding veil and his favorite pillow tucked under one arm, Ciel pads
barefoot through the halls. The hallway floors chill his feet as he searches
out the servants’ quarters, takes a wrong turning, comes full circle again
before he finds the proper door.
He’s certain Sebastian won’t sleep through his entry; in fact, the demon is
likely not asleep at all, waiting for him to open the door, that smirk on his
face…. Ciel scowls, clutches the blanket closed with one hand, pushes the door
open with the other.
It’s entirely dark; there’s no fire, and the room is icy and quiet. Ciel scuffs
his way across the floor until he bumps knees first into the bed, and still his
butler has not spoken. Feeling his way with hand and knees, he climbs onto the
mattress, perches gingerly on the edge of it. “It’s freezing,” he whispers, and
finally hears the softest breath of a laugh. A fire sparks to life in the
grate, and the flare of light illuminates Sebastian, in a nightshirt of all
things, holding the blankets up for Ciel to slide in beside him.
“I’m letting all the warm air out waiting for you, bocchan.”
Ciel stares for a moment, taking in this absurdity, then shoves his body in
close. “Shut up.”
***
The little master’s limbs tremble, even under the blankets, even pressed along
his own warm body. Sebastian tucks him close, delicately, as if he were some
fragile creature, and tries to suppress the little flutter in his chest as the
boy nestles closer. He’s never ventured to Sebastian’s room on his own before,
nor to Sebastian’s bed, yet he curls up against him with a resigned and
comfortable little sigh, shoving his own pillow under his head. His face is so
close that Sebastian can taste his breath on that little exhale, a little stale
from sleep, but with a hint of his favorite tooth powder. One eye, the right,
opens to regard Sebastian carefully.
“I can’t believe you wear a nightshirt to bed.”
“What else would I wear?”
“I don’t know. I always imagined you sleeping in your clothes.”
“That would be impractical, bocchan,” he murmurs, and that single eye with his
seal on it draws him closer, until their noses nearly touch. The boy finds the
matching seal on his butler’s hand, and presses his palm to it, and tips his
head back just a little as the contract flares between them. Sebastian finds
that between the urges of his chest and his groin and his stomach, he cannot
resist that tiny flash of pale throat, and lowers his mouth to taste it.
Ciel’s fingers tighten over the back of his hand as he lets the tips of fangs
scrape along delicate skin; his little master sucks in a deep breath, blows it
out again, slides onto his back and pulls Sebastian over him like a blanket. He
follows the unspoken command willingly; this child’s desire sets him alight
like nothing else, makes his blasted heart race and his blood flow unerringly
south. Over time he’s come to accept the strength of this reaction and let it
slide, though as he smoothes his tongue along Ciel’s jawline, he knows deep
down that he is more tied to this master, this meal, than he should be.
Still, the taste of him is intoxicating, his skin and his soft hitching breaths
and his soul shining out. He fidgets under the weight of Sebastian’s body, cock
already stirring between them, but Sebastian will not be distracted yet; Ciel
is too delicious, the barest hint of an adam’s apple bobbing, the flare of his
nostrils when Sebastian covers the boy’s mouth with his own.
Ciel has been taught to offer his tongue and he does so, eager, and the demon
devours it blissfully. Then he feels the child’s fitful hands fist in his
nightshirt and tug, demanding. Sebastian kisses him hard in answer and lifts
his body just enough; hand over hand Ciel pulls the shirt up his back, and
breaks away from the kiss to gasp in a breath and yank the fabric over his
head. One arm at a time Sebastian slithers out of the shirt and tosses it
aside, and Ciel’s eye glows softly as he slides restless hands over the
butler’s naked skin.
***
It seems impossible now, with Sebastian’s skin searing him everywhere it
touches, that he was ever cold in this room, in this bed. Ciel lets his eyes
flutter closed as the demon shifts himself further up the bed, and can’t bite
back a soft cry as a cock, hard and hot and bigger than his own, pokes up under
his ruched-up nightshirt and rubs up alongside his own erection like a happy
cat.
A low growl rumbles up in Sebastian’s chest, and Ciel presses his face there to
feel it, struck dumb by the slow friction just where he longs for it most.
Feeling suddenly daring, he twists to bite down on a nipple, and Sebastian
moans gratifyingly into his hair as his hips find a slow gliding rhythm.
Ciel is undone; he is well trapped by the demon’s limbs, but he no longer
cares, and in spite of himself he feels safe here. The man’s weight could crush
the breath out of him, yet he feels inexplicably light, the yoke of sadness and
vengeance and the Phantomhive name burned away by the pleasure that licks up
his limbs like flames. He arches up hard, seeking, and marvels that every time
Sebastian touches him this way, the urgency he feels takes him newly by
surprise. His nightshirt is limp with sweat now, riding higher and higher up
his stomach and chest as Sebastian rocks against him; it catches on his nipples
and tickles at his ribs, and his thighs tremble, trapped between Sebastian’s.
His butler’s cock leaks, coats his own with it, slicks a trail along his belly;
Ciel doesn’t do that yet, he’s only recently started to ejaculate at all, and
some small part of his mind is fascinated while the rest of him just presses
harder against that blissful friction, lets go an undignified whine every time
Sebastian’s scrotum knocks against his own. Blinded with want, he fumbles a
hand in search of his butler’s, presses his palm tight to the seal. It flares
like a current between them, crackles over Ciel’s skin—the demon’s hunger, like
a dog on a leash, all that power bending to Ciel’s will. And beneath it, a
steady driving thrum—badump, badump, badump—the heartbeat setting the pace of
their bodies.
“Bocchan,” the demon hisses into his hair, and the contract surges again, and
that’s all it takes—Ciel scrabbles at the sheets for purchase and throws his
head back, the world fracturing around him into a million tiny pieces.
***
All he can hear is his own heartbeat in his ears and his master’s stuttered
cries, coming in searing little spurts between their stomachs.
He pauses out of ingrained habit, trying to reign in the sheer force of need
that makes his breath come fast. The child is his master; the child orders, and
wants, and receives. The child’s pleasure has been his goal all along. But he
has never been so close, so lost, so—
Then Ciel huffs a breath against his chest and presses skinny fingers into the
skin of his lower back, tugging him closer. “You don’t have to stop. Don’t.
Don’t stop.”
It’s an order, and it lights like a match in his chest and at the base of his
spine. “Yes, my lord,” he husks against the crown of that mussed head, and
slides his cock through the sticky puddle on Ciel’s stomach and the scratchy
dusting of hair. The fingers on his back trace easy patterns, exploring, and
the other hand stays plastered to the seal of their contract; through it a
pleased and quiet urging surrounds him, and curiosity, and something warmer
that drives away all reason. He’s close, so close, and he’s never felt human
pleasure like this, reverberating out through his limbs like the plucked notes
of a string bass.
Through the haze, he can feel the featherlight touch of lips along his
collarbone and curious fingers that skitter down over his ass; he muffles a low
sound in the pillows and ramps up the pace. Then, slowly, two skinny arms slide
around his back and grip at the spots, just beside his shoulderblades, where
wings lie hiding, waiting to spring out—and all at once it’s too much, that
touch and the surprising brightness of the boy beneath him and the quick
tightening of his chest and his balls at once.
“I want to see you,” Ciel murmurs, tipping his face up, and Sebastian props
himself up on hands and elbows to obey; blue eyes fix on his and hold them. “I
want to watch you come.”
“Yes, my lord,” the demon moans out, and shudders, and does.
***
In the morning Ciel wakes in his own bed. The sun through the window is
blinding, and drifts of snow have piled up along the sill and in the corners of
the panes; he can smell tea brewing, and when he stretches out he’s
suspiciously not sticky—could he really have slept through a bath?
“Good morning, bocchan,” comes a murmur from beside the bed, and he turns,
peering under sleep-glued eyelids.
“Good morning, Sebastian.”
For a moment they’re silent, regarding each other. There’s something changed in
the butler’s expression, something unidentifiable but maybe a little more open
than before. Then he reaches out to brush unruly bangs out of Ciel’s eyes and
thumbs a bit of gunk from the corner of one, and then he knows the
difference—this gentleness is new, and unfamiliar to a boy gone four years with
a demon for his guardian. Sebastian’s hands are warm, and the bed that last
night had seemed a trap is now a cozy nest, and Ciel wants to tell the demon
this, and doesn’t know how.
Sebastian rises, pours the tea.
“Is it still snowing?” Ciel asks, quiet, and his butler bends and offers the
fragrant, steaming cup on its saucer.
“No, bocchan,” he replies with a smile. “It’s not snowing anymore.”
***
The heart of a demon, Sebastian is learning, is a complex puzzle. He has tried
to ignore it, to no avail. The only choice, it seems, is to let it have its
way. He is unused to guidance from an organ not involved with meals, and his
hunger is still strong.
The heart, it appears, is stronger.
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