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Ciel still isn’t sure how they’ve found themselves here at the end of it all. How they’ve managed to begrudgingly strike a truce, and live together in some vague sense of harmony with only minimal bloodshed. Future bloodshed notwithstanding.
And yet despite his apprehension, Phantomhive manor and its inhabitants seem to have fallen into a relatively mundane routine. That is until half of Europe is in danger from forces unknown and they just so happened to be the poor bastards tasked with figuring out how to fix it.
Long live the Queen.
An unconventional cohabitation indeed, especially when the lot consists of: a set of twins—with not a soul to their shared name between them; a reaper—retired, from both collections and necromancy disguised as scientific exploration, due to his multiple failed romances within the aforementioned twins’ bloodline; and a demon—who some days is the most human of them all, though he’s not likely to admit it any time soon. And there’s the staff, of course, but they’re the least of Ciel’s concerns. That’s Sebastian’s mess to, metaphorically and quite literally, clean up.
But as of now, the here where Ciel finds himself, is his own bedroom. The master, to be exact. A domain that tradition dictates belongs to the current head of the Phantomhive household, whomever that may be.
Something his elder brother seems to be taking great issue with.
“I just don’t see why it’s necessary,” he pouts, arms crossed, his petulant glare directed out the window facing the gardens. Soon he’ll have complaints of the rose bushes as well. Poor Finny.
“My bed?” Ciel questions with a raised brow, humoring him in the hopes of getting this nonsense over and done with. He’d much prefer returning to his busy schedule, than dealing with a temperamental teenager who has been locked in a coffin for the past three years.
Those sorts of conditions tend to make one a bit…touchy.
Ciel had just finished breakfast, and was on the cusp of dressing for the day with Sebastian kneeling at his feet, when the other boy came barreling into the room. Glancing at the scene with clear contempt, he declared there was an urgent matter that needed to be discussed privately, and that the help should make themselves scarce until further notice. A very dramatic display, to be sure, and all before noon. Ciel should have had an extra cup of tea.
“No!” His brother huffs, beginning to pace like an irate jungle cat. Not unlike the one Sebastian sought pleasure in shoving his head into. “Obviously not. That would be ridiculous. Where would you sleep?”
“Oh that would be ridiculous. My apologies.” Ciel rolls his eyes, the slight much more effective with both visible. “Then what? What is the point of this,” he gestures towards his twin’s inane behavior, “tantrum?”
“It is not a—no, you’re just trying to bait me into changing the subject, and I won’t allow it this time.”
Ciel smirks, from where he’s lying on his stomach, chin resting on his fist. “Are you certain? Could be fun. Who knows where I’ll lead us next.”
“Cute,” his brother sneers.
“Thank you,” Ciel accepts easily, regardless of it not being an actual compliment, and purely to antagonize the other boy further. “I try.” Sitting up, he swings his legs over the side of his bed, kicking them coquettishly as he leans back onto his palms. If he angles his posture just so, his nightgown is drawn taut to his frame, leaving little to the imagination. The position is meant to distract, to entice. To invite trouble. He watches his older brother stop in his tracks, pupils dilating, hands clenched. “But do get to your point. I can’t dillydally with you all day. One of us has a company and an estate to run.”
“See! That!” he exclaims, snapping out of his trance. “That right there!” A finger wags in Ciel’s direction, and in that instant, with his high collar and formfitting waistcoat, the elder appears so like their father in the throes of disagreement that Ciel has to swallow the knot forming in his throat. Disastrous, when the shameful weight of it settles hot in his belly instead, sparking arousal not easily hidden in his state of undress. “We agreed to both take on the family duties, and yet you refuse to—“
But Ciel is also his father’s son, and something far worse after all these years of playing games with a demon. Games he’s been known to win. “Pray tell, dear brother. How is getting rid of my bed relevant to family duties?”
“Not your bed. Mine. And if you wish to split hairs, beds have much to do with family duties.” He leers. “Shall I explain that to you again? Or would you prefer I give a demonstration—“
“For the last time,” Ciel wrinkles his nose, but his tone is firm, “stop attempting to impregnate me. I am not a broodmare.”
“Pity,” his brother winks, rakish in nature.
Ciel sighs. Good grief. Sebastian better not be eavesdropping. I hardly need him getting ideas.
“Furthermore, how dare you send me halfway across the manor to that hovel.”
“And by hovel, are you referring to the nursery I so kindly had Sebastian renovate into your new bedroom?” Ciel asks wryly. “You do realize we slept in there for the first ten years of our lives, yes?”
“Well he ruined it! The floorboards creak, the drapes smell of moth balls, and there is a terrible draft. It should be condemned!” he shrieks with revulsion.
Ciel has to bite his own cheek to stifle the laughter bubbling in his chest. “Should it now?” He remarks, amused at his brother's theatrics. “Trust, I’ll be sure to make Sebastian aware that his efforts have displeased you, Earl Phantomhive. How many lashes shall he take? Fifty? One hundred?”
“You’re being facetious.”
“Only to match your absurdity.” Ciel gives him a pointed look. “So how about instead of insulting our home—which is in pristine condition, might I add—simply admit that you wish for us to share.”
The elder twin balks. “I most certainly will not.”
Ciel tilts his head, gazing up at his brother from under his long lashes. “But that is what you want, correct?”
Suddenly, the original Phantomhive heir stalks towards him, planting his hands on either side of his baby brother's hips and effectively pinning him in place. A pretty specimen to be dissected. Ciel’s entire line of sight becomes enchanting sapphire eyes and an impish grin that could rival the devil himself.
He would know.
As the other boy leans forward, Ciel instinctively arches to meet him, the pair caught in their own gravitational pull. But like a dying star, eventually they’ll contract under their own weight, crushing them both until they collapse into a black hole, destroying everything they touch in the process.
Beautiful and tragic. A legacy fulfilled.
Against Ciel’s ear he whispers in a honey-dipped voice, promise dripping from his tongue and melting Ciel from the inside out, “I want you to want it. This. Me. Why are you being so obstinate, darling?” His lips brush the gem stone piercing Ciel’s lobe and he shudders. “We already share so much. Why not this as well?”
His mouth continues past Ciel’s jaw, down the column of his vulnerable throat, coaxing the younger boy to bare it along with his teeth, his bespoken soul. For every push, a pull. Every victory, met with a loss, but not defeat. This is how they play—with power and temptation and sin. But that is the way of siblings in aristocracy, is it not? Even more so in the biblical sense. At least they haven’t killed one another yet...just a bit of light disemboweling. And technically, that occurred after the elder was already dead.
Ciel’s lips parts, a groan slipping free. “You’re impossible.” A phrase holding more truth than most he utters. Impossible in life, impossible in death.
Teeth that ache to sink into delicate skin, to tear and rend, lower to nip at Ciel’s collarbone as his brother shoves aside the wide lacy neckline of his nightgown. Making quick work of any buttons as he goes, he retorts, “And you are cruel.” He clicks his tongue in a scolding manner, and Ciel feels its recoil jolt through him like a gunshot, the fabric trapped between his thighs dampening. “Teasing your big brother this way.” The elder twin uses Ciel’s flustered state to his advantage and pushes him flat to the duvet, his knee rising to wedge Ciel’s legs apart and keep them spread.
With nothing beneath his sleep clothes, when the smooth skin of his brother’s knee comes in contact with his cunt, Ciel gasps, his fingers scrambling at the other boy’s shoulder for purchase. “I’m not!” he lies, fighting the urge to grind into the touch. To give into the need swelling within him.
“Not teasing? Or not cruel?” The words are asked in heated breaths fanned over Ciel’s exposed chest, the surface of which grows more prominent by the day. An unavoidable nuisance.
But once his brother notices how sensitive that area has become, nails start to pinch at his tender flesh, and that clever mouth sucks purpling splotches onto him like paint staining a canvas. It’s maddening, the pleasure-pain from his brother's bullying combined with the ardentness of his attention. Neither doing a damned thing to dissipate the lust clouding his mind. In lieu of a defense, Ciel can only writhe and try not to cry out for more.
“Your body is a natural at doing the former, while your denial does the latter. What a naughty boy. You should be the one receiving lashes.” A hand slaps against his bottom, but stays put after the fact, its grip bruising as it hikes Ciel’s leg up around the other’s waist. “Right here.”
“Ha—aah! Ci—”
“Would you bend over Father’s desk for me, I wonder?”
My desk, Ciel thinks childishly, even as he gets wetter at his brother’s taunting. Everything in this bloody house belongs to me. Including you…especially you.
“Would you beg for more when I was done?” Then that silver tongue flicks at his left nipple, his brother taking it into his mouth and inflicting a vicious bite.
Ciel’s spine bows, his fingers twisting into storm-colored locks. “Nuh—oh!”
“Liar.” He laps at the blood beading around Ciel’s areola, his moan guttural. “I hear you most nights. You and that dog. When you scream for him. When he makes you hurt. Will you sound just as sweet for me, baby brother?”
The knee between Ciel’s legs applies more pressure, and the hold on his backside forces him to move against it in a languid ebb and flow. Each motion either presses at his hole where he’s achingly empty or bumps his clit, causing sharp spikes of tension to coil tight and incandescent in his core.
Ciel chases the feeling with reckless abandon, but he wants…he wants… “Kiss me.”
His brother swipes his tongue deliberately along his own bottom lip, watching Ciel watch him. “Say you want me in your bed.” His mouth hovers close, torturously so. “That you cannot stand to sleep without me beside you.”
“No,” Ciel whines weakly, shaking his head, even as his hips keep rocking forward.
“Say it!” his brother growls, jarringly inhuman, and reminiscent of a dead thing meant to be in the ground.
“I won’t!” Ciel rasps through heaving breaths, he’s so close he can feel the warmth of his climax quivering in his belly, just waiting to burst.
“Fine.”
Suddenly, the space above Ciel is heartbreakingly vacant. He blinks, dazed then furious. “Wha—What the hell? Get back here!” He demands.
“No,” the elder says snidely. “I won’t.”
His own words thrown back at him nearly fill Ciel with enough rage to raise his hand in a slap. But this isn’t a demon who deserves his endless scorn, just his bastard of a brother whom he unfortunately loves. “You’re lucky Sebastian took the gun from under my pillow, or I’d put a bullet in you.”
“My, someone’s been spending too much time in the company of Aunt Angelina,” the other boy coos. “To kill a man just because he refuses you. What a cock-hungry little strumpet my darling brother has become. Tell me, was it the trauma or the soul dealing that has made you this way? It’s alright, no judgment.”
“Fuck you,” Ciel grits out.
“No, sweetheart. I don’t think so. Not until you give me what I want.”
Ciel snaps, tackling him to the mattress like he never could when they were children. Too frightened. Too frail. Too trapped in hero worship and behind closed doors he was never meant to walk through.
He is none of those things now.
Ciel grabs his older brother by the collar of his shirt and slams him against the headboard, straddling his waist. And when their eyes lock, he strikes, wrapping his left hand around his twin’s throat. The unforgiving metal of their family’s ring digs spitefully into the other boy’s jugular, and Ciel revels in his shock. In the formidable body beneath him—so breathtakingly pliant in submission—being a perfect fit between his open thighs. A body that he once ordered to burn.
At least now they can catch flame together.
“I thought you said you heard me most nights,” Ciel purrs, observing how the humiliation of being bested by his younger brother blooms across the elder’s cheeks. The peachy embarrassment only darkens as Ciel’s unoccupied hand drops to the boy’s shorts and frees his cock, as he strokes the hot silky flesh in his grip.
He keeps the pace torturous, each motion measured and constricting as he admires how lovely his brother looks with indignation radiating off him in waves. Ciel bites his lip and enjoys how the cock in his grasp twitches at the sight.
Adorable.
For his twin’s obedience, Ciel offers a reward. He brings the tip to his slick cunt and allows it to slide along the seam, but not quite enter just yet. The touch is absolute bliss, a precursor to the victory within his reach. “Clearly, you weren’t paying attention.”
“Hnng! I—”
Ciel puts a finger to his impatient sibling’s lips. “Ah, ah, none of that. It seems you're forgetting what mother taught us. We have to take turns. You had yours; now I am speaking. Do you understand, sweetheart?” The restrained twin nods, and Ciel pets his neck in approval. “Good boy.”
He feels more than hears his brother whimper, a short vibration against his curved palm.
Then, smiling prettily to soften the blow, Ciel delivers his ultimatum. “This is my room, and it will remain so.” His brother snarls, but stays silent. Smart. “But,” he concedes, “perhaps if you ask nicely and do not throw a fit like a toddler denied his favorite toy, I might be convinced.” His twin’s eyes gleam, his smile radiant. Ciel knows exactly what he’s thinking and immediately nips whatever future scheme he’s planning in the bud. “Only on occasion! Do not just barge in whenever it pleases you. I am very busy and need rest. Do not be a bother.”
“Me?” his brother scoffs. “A bother? You use my soul to summon your whore beast and now I’ve been reduced to a bother?”
Ciel narrows his gaze, his hand squeezing until his captive sucks in a sharp wheeze. “Do not speak to me as if you have any idea what I was forced to do that day—the things I’ve done since.” Ciel’s lungs seize, his heart begins to race, nausea coats his mouth with saliva, but he does not allow the panic to take root. I am outside the cage. I am outside the cage. He swallows, exhaling slowly, his voice steadier than the torrential emotions warring inside him. “I would have given anything to be the one with a dagger in my chest, my blood on that altar. But I had to live. I had to keep going. All with the knowledge that everything was my fault.”
His brother’s face crumples, wounded. “N-no, wait. I didn’t mean—it was not—” he falters, stammering, as if picturing it himself. As if he’s imagining what it must have been like to be the one gripping those cold metal bars while the other was slaughtered without mercy. As if he was the one left behind.
But was he not? Were they not both kept apart and yearning for their other half? Grieving for a love they no longer thought possible?
His brother is impossible, and Ciel has never been more grateful.
So he unhands him, only to end his sputtering with a kiss. Intoxicating and terribly maudlin, Ciel can taste the apology passed between their lips, but whether it’s his brother’s or his own is lost in the mess of affection and teeth and the tangle of their tongues. Passion still simmers, but for a second, the quiet calm of dust settling over an empty grave envelopes them. Foreheads pressed, Ciel brushes an ashen strand from his twin’s face.
“Enough,” he whispers the word against his brother’s kiss-swollen mouth. “We have been through enough. No more fighting. Not about this.”
Their next kiss is gentle, tearful, fragile as webbed glass, and though Ciel fears it may shatter—the moment, their lives, his heart—he’s secure in the comfort that his brother won’t use this weakness in opposition…because it’s one they have in common. A weakness for each other.
Mistaking Ciel’s relief for distress, his twin attempts to soothe him. “Shh, I apologize. It’s just me. I would never hurt you.”
Ciel chokes out a laugh through his tears. “Yes, you would.” Another truth, but this one much more bitter to the taste. “You have.”
“No. Never you.” His brother shakes his head a fraction, a tiny smile dancing across his lips. “I knew you would be fine. You’re so strong. So brilliant.” He gestures to Ciel in his lap, expression smug. “Look at all you’ve accomplished without anyone’s help.”
“But I didn’t. I had—“
“You had you, and that’s all you needed. That’s all you’ve ever needed.” He cups Ciel’s ruddy cheeks, thumb caressing the faint glow emanating off his contract eye, holding him like something precious. “But I’m not that strong, darling. I need you. In life. In death. I’ve followed you through both...and I only wish to stay by your side.”
At that, Ciel makes a feeble broken noise before crashing their mouths together, unraveling as sobs overtake him. A supernova on the verge of an explosion.
And his brother cradles him through it. Twines the fingers of one hand in Ciel’s hair, as the other dips to his entrance, all while muttering amongst frantic kisses, “Perfect. You’re so perfect. Need you more than anything. Come here, darling. Don’t cry. Don’t—”
It’s excruciating, how much love Ciel carries inside him. How much of it is spilling out. Hemorrhaging. Onto his brother’s tongue in hoarse moans. Onto his fingers and then his cock as Ciel bats his hand away and sinks down, letting it complete him. Them.
The stretch stings so exquisitely that his kiss turns biting, metallic. “Mmph—fuh—“ Both of Ciel’s palms land on the headboard with a loud smack, curling around the intricately carved wood for leverage, and using the momentum to snap his hips in wanton thrusts.
In the midst of intimacy, it occurs to him that this was once his parents' marital bed. That as depraved and vile as it may be, Ciel has never felt closer to them. Living as they lived. Fucking as they fucked. Did they love just as monstrously? Is this how he and his brother were created? Will history repeat itself?
Ciel’s walls flutter, tightening around his twin’s cock at his own wicked thoughts, and he hears the other boy grunt, losing himself to an exultation only they can provide. Meaning that the nails previously scratching at Ciel’s shoulders, turn jagged, animalistic, carving a bloody path down his back, and snagging on the brand scar marring his flank.
But it’s nothing Ciel isn’t accustomed to. This isn’t the first beast to frequent his bed, and beyond a shadow of a doubt, it will not be the last.
That is why when the corpse of a boy who should have rotted long ago, reaches the meat of Ciel’s hips with the his not-quite claws, leaving behind crimson fingerprints to mark his younger brother’s flesh like a claim, it merely adds kindling to fire already coursing through Ciel’s veins.
His rhythm becomes erratic, causing his movements to stutter, yet his brother is ceaseless with praise. “Yes. Yes. Just like that, sweetheart. Don’t stop. I’m so proud of you.”
“C-call me,” Ciel murmurs, fragmented. “I want you to call me—”
A reassurance of, “I know exactly what you want, baby brother. Exactly who you are,” is panted into the hollow of his throat, and Ciel believes him. More than he has ever believed anyone.
“Please. Please.”
“Ciel,” his brother utters like a prayer, “My dearest Ciel. So lovely. So brave. And mine. All mine. Even damned we belong to one another, don't we? Say it. No one else. Say it!”
“Yes! No one else. I’m all yours.” Ciel’s knees buckle, and the inferno within finally consumes him in a blaze of ecstasy. Inside, he pulses through his climax and feels his brother do the same, crushing Ciel to his front until his ribs creak, until his vision starts to darken around the edges. But once he eases up, Ciel can’t deny how helplessly endeared he is, and presses his lips to the crown of his brother’s disheveled hair. “And you are mine. Idiot.”
Still quaking in Ciel’s arms, the other boy mouths sloppy kisses across his shoulder, his sternum, licking him clean of blood like a mother cat would a kitten. He allows it, if only to quell whatever hunger being a bizarre doll causes. For now, this seems the most tamed solution to an ongoing problem.
Then, from between Ciel’s breasts comes a muffled giggle. “This may be my favorite birthday yet.”
Ciel blinks. His what? Birthday?
He contemplates the date and…he hadn’t realized. No one had mentioned an event planned, and since the fire he’s made it a point to purposefully ignore the day unless prompted.
“Oh,” Ciel says absently, not sure how to proceed. “I was unaware.”
His brother lifts his head to gaze at him softly, “I gathered.”
“Well then,” Ciel flicks him in the forehead, teasing. At least this part is simple. “Happy birthday, Ciel.”
“Hey!” His twin pouts. “Rude.”
Ciel snickers at his offense. “My, it’s strange to say that again. It’s been…far too long.”
In return, he receives a lingering kiss on his cheek and his very own, “And happy birthday to you, Ciel.” Then they’re tumbling backwards, Ciel hitting the mattress and inhaling a shuddery breath as his brother follows, still buried snugly inside him. “Hm, it doesn’t feel strange to me at all. In fact, I think we should celebrate like this every year.”
“You lech!” Ciel shrieks, cackling, shoving at him halfheartedly.
His brother just laughs, delighted, rolling his hips in a deep languid thrust that has Ciel fisting the duvet on either side of his head. “Hush, baby brother. Let me take care of you. Consider it a birthday gift to us both.”
And really, Ciel couldn’t argue with that logic even if he wanted to. Which he very much does not.