Same night. Same bed. Kazuki felt a heavy feeling on his chest only to be struck by a little fist on his chin that belonged to one mighty Miri Unasaka. Still reeling from drowsiness, he tried to keep the child away from his body. He placed her gently between him and Rei, who was snoring softly. The cat found its way to their bed as well. What we need right now is to buy the biggest bed available in the market. This couldnât go on as he closed his eyes and tried to sleep for the second time.
I want this to be a light hearted AU; so letâs say Sebastian owes the Phantomhive Ancestors a favor, and now he had been summoned by Vincent to pay off that debt. That is to say, no oneâs soul is on the line here đ
Sebastian and Ciel kissing (or almost kissing!) in canon content.
Recently, Iâve been seeing a lot of discourse because some people say that Sebastian and Ciel have nothing going on in canon, and that the homoerotic subtext is just a thing the shippers are âmaking upâ.
So I decided to compile all the moments where they have kissed in canon, or in official adaptations.
Sebastian showing his devotion by kissing Cielâs hand, in Book of Atlantic.
Not gay enough? What about that kiss that got interrupted by the fireworks in season 1 episode 9? The same episode where itâs hinted at that Ciel is the person Sebastian cared most about in the world, and vice versa.
Not enough? What about this interrupted kiss they had in Season 2 episode 6. Sure he was going to taste Cielâs soul with his lips.
Huh, itâs not enough yet. What about a waltz that turned into a kiss, in this season 2 official art?
What about the time Sebastian kissed Cielâs head through a towel, in the ending of Book of Circus?
But since itâs still not convincing enough, what about the time they actually kissed on the lips, in the live action movie?
Now they only need to kiss in the upcoming Brighton arc, but itâs clear that this ship has more than sailed.
If your dad openly lusts to devour your soul and sully your innocence there's a problem bestie, if your dad licks his lips at the thought of you THERE IS A PROBLEM BESTIE.
"father and son" my ass. read the room dumbass, you can't really think shipping a ship that's basically canon is more gross than adding on a familial dynamic to what obviously has sexual undertones.
if the content makes you icky ew uncomfy then DO NOT ENGAGE WITH THAT CONTENT jesus christ
Ciel closed the boot of the car and leaned against the lid, looking up at the house. It loomed ahead, backdropped by the darkening sky of dusk, the walls scorched black and windows still shattered - left untouched, standing in a state of disrepair beyond the barrier of wire fencing and 'Danger: Keep Out' signs.
He hadnât been here in years; not since the night of the fire. Since the night he had lost everything.
Of all the family that had lived in that house, Ciel had been the only one spared the blaze. Sent to live with one of his aunts, he had spent much of his youth searching for answers - not for why it had happened, but of what came next.
He quickly understood the physical processes that accompanied death - the truth of bodily decay, and the actions taken to prevent it as funerals were organised. He also knew well enough how little of those processes applied to his own family. There had been hardly anything left after the fire for nature to take such a course. Just charred, empty husks. A closed casket affair, with scant chance of saying a proper farewell.
That was what had led him to wonder what else happened after death - the fate of the person who had been inside the physical form, of the soul, as many people thought of it. There had been much talk of heaven at the funeral, of eternal peace; it had been the thing his aunt had tried to assure him of, too, in the weeks that followed. That the family was happy together, in some better place. In paradise.
So Ciel had read about this 'heaven', and its counterpart. And of other beliefs of the afterlife in other cultures - of Sheol, of Hades and Duat; Hel and Irkalla; Diyu and Yomi. None could agree on the level of 'paradise' nor 'peace' that may be found after death.
From there, Ciel had found his way to researching beliefs in reincarnation and the karmic cycle of saáčsÄra, and later still to the spiritual concept of the dead lingering as a helper and guardian to those remaining in the realm of the living, never quite leaving this plane, though equally still not quite a part of it.
It seemed that all people believed differently. All in accordance with what they each individually found the most comforting.
Ciel could not find comfort in something so shallow and uncertain. He wanted something more exact. He wanted to know, rather than to feel.
And that is where science had come back in to play.
If the consequences of death were measurable for the physical form, then the spirit - if it had existed - must, too, be measurable. If the 'self' manifested as some form of energy, then the laws of physics said that it couldnât simply disappear. It had to be somewhere.
So Ciel had turned his attention to investigations into the paranormal. And that interest had led him back home, in search of whatever remained.
Taking a deep breath, he hiked the strap of the duffle bag up on his shoulder and made his way up the path from the driveway. The fence was gated closed, locked up with a padlock and chain, but Ciel had the key - the one to the front door, too â if the piece of plywood that had been put up over the entryway still counted as a âfront doorâ.
He made his way inside, stepping over what remained of the upturned hallway table, lifting the collar of his shirt over his mouth and nose to keep from coughing. The air was still from abandonment, heavy with dust - and with something else, he hoped. Something more preternatural.
Ciel looked around at each room of the ground floor, taking in the aftermath for the first time. The way was laden with ash and half-burned furniture; the ceiling had mostly peeled away in the heat, leaving the wooden beams supporting the upper level exposed - and revealing holes in the upstairs flooring where the boards had been eaten away by the fire, their crumbled remains laying at his feet a storey below. A shame; he had been hoping to go upstairs, back to his old room, but the way looked far from being structurally sound. Downstairs would have to do.
Unzipping his bag, Ciel let the fabric drop from his face as he retrieved one of the pieces of equipment he had brought along - an electromagnetic field detector, which he would use to find just the right spot for this evening's experiment.
Switching the device on to inspect for levels of activity, Ciel held it ahead if himself as he backtracked from his primary assessment of the area. Readings were low, only triggering the first of the five LED lights on the display, with the occasional blip of the second. Hardly enough to warrant thoughts of lingering spirit energy - it could just as likely be picking up on his own electronics.
That was, until he approached the dining room.
Scanning the doorway, the lights of the reader shot up suddenly from one to four. Ciel passed the EMF reader across the space several times, just to make certain, each sweep causing the same unusual spike as it passed between the hallway and the entrance. The dining room it was, then.
He made his way slowly into the room, trying to pinpoint a specific origin for the EMF waves. Perhaps it was his imagination - a placebo effect brought on by the glow of the LED's on the sensor - but the air in here felt different. More alive. He paced around the long oak table to the far end of the room that used to lead through to the conservatory. The timbers of the archway had long since buckled, blocking the way, and vines had begun to creep their way in from the overgrown garden through the cracked panes beyond. The readings were lower on this side, though still stronger than in the other rooms, dipping back to the third light.
Ciel switched off the meter and returned to the end of the room that he had entered from, brushing the debris from a patch of the floor to one side with his foot to make up a spot for himself. He set the duffle bag down on the edge of the table, which seemed to have (mostly) survived the ordeal, though the light fixture from the ceiling above lay shattered at its centre. Out of the bag came a tripod and camcorder, which he set up beside the table, pointing at the empty space on the ash-coated floor. In that space, he placed a spirit board. Tonight, he meant to make contact.
He surrounded the board with a ring of candles; black ones, for protection - or so had been recommended by the rather eccentric moderator for the paranormal forum Ciel had recently joined, whom the young man knew only by his username: undertaker_136649. Lighting each one in turn, he checked the camcorder's viewfinder to make sure it was at the right angle and hit 'record', before taking a seat in the dust.
Ciel placed a planchette on the board and set his index and middle fingers to the wooden piece. "I call to the spirits present, and ask for you to come forward and speak," he called out, "is there anyone of the Phantomhive family here with me now?"
He sat in silence, the room darkening around him as the sun outside ducked below the horizon, lessening the already limited light that filtered in from the conservatory. There was no answer.
With a sigh, Ciel tried again. "Is there anyone from the Phantomhive Family here with me? Please move the planchette to 'yes' if you are here."
Again, nothing. The outside world had fully been plunged into night by now, leaving Ciel with only the light of the candles.
He lowered his head in disappointment. The EMF reader must have picked up something else - compromised wiring in the walls, or some other source of radiation. He'd been foolish to think he would be successful in finding anything here. Any energy that might have been was long gone - consumed as fuel for the same fire that had eaten away at the physical housing - if it had ever existed in the first place.
Against his better judgement - out of blind hope more than any logical reasoning - he tried one more time, quietly asking the empty darkness, "is there anyone there who would like to come forward?"
The candles flickered, the flame swaying to one side as though in a light breeze. Ciel lifted his head and looked around at the circle of dancing light; a draught - from the broken windows, he thought. It must be.
And then he felt movement beneath his fingertips.
When he looked back at the board, the planchette had crept its way up to the top left corner.
'Yes'.
Ciel's heart leapt with excitement.
"Are you a member of the Phantomhive Family?"
A pause, and then the planchette slid across to the opposite side. 'No.'
Ciel felt a sinking feeling as his bright heart immediately plummeted.
He'd been hoping that he might have reached his dad, or his mum, or...
It was strange for the spirit to not at least be a Phantomhive. The house was old, but as far as Ciel knew it had always been in his family.
"Did you used to live in this house?" He asked, narrowing down the possibilities.
The planchette moved down to the alphabet on the board. s-t-i-l-l-d-o. 'Still do'. Ciel let out a single chuff of amusement beside himself; apparently he had met a ghost with a sense of humour.
If the spirit had previously lived here, though, then it would rule out any family friends who might have returned from the grave for another visit. A member of the household staff then, maybe, from some past generation? This was the dining room, after all... was this a maid, or a butler, perhaps? Stuck in a perpetual loop of performing their lifely duties?
"Alright then. What's your name?" Ciel asked. He could cross-reference with archives of his family's documents later, then - give some background to whoever it was that had managed to pierce through the veil.
The planchette made its way back up to the corner of the board.
'No'.
"No?"
Ciel waited, but it still did not budge from the word. He tried again, asking - "You don't have a name?"
For a long while, the spirit did not move the planchette. Ciel was about to assume it had left and give up, beginning to move the piece himself towards the farewell at the bottom of the board and close their conversation, but it began to pull back as they passed through the alphabet, retaking control of the planchette to elaborating for him: n-o-n-a-m-e.
'No name'. Ciel frowned. Had this soul been trapped between places so long that its memory had faded? Was it still here because it had lost its sense of self, its purpose for staying behind in the first place?
He was about to ask, but the planchette had been put back into action, making a sweeping figure-eight motion before stopping on a letter and beginning to write again - g-i-v-e-m-e-o-n-e.
'Give me one'?
He was being asked to rename the spirit.
Ciel's mind drew an immediate blank. He had always been generally bad at picking names for things, relying on characters or people he knew for inspiration. He shook his head, letting out a drawn 'errmmm' as he tried to come up with something for the spirit, landing firstly on the name of his dog - of his family's dog, rather. The reason he had escaped the same fate as the rest of them.
"Sebastian. You can be called Sebastian."
There was a long pause, like it was considering the fit, and then the planchette began to trace a path: t-h-a-n-k-y-o-u.
Ciel let out a breath that he hadnât realised he was holding. Did it really matter that much? If the spirit liked its new name? Perhaps it was the suddenness of the request, or the weight of expectation. Or maybe because he didn't actually know what gender the spirit was - if a soul that couldn't remember its own name could even remember whether it had been male or female. If spirits even cared about something as arbitrary as gender.
The planchette twitched beneath his fingers, spelling a further word: y-o-u-r-s.
The ghost was asking for his name now - like some belated formal introduction.
"Uhmm. Ciel." He answered, "my name is Ciel."
There was silence for a minute or so, until the planchette spelled the name out for him - as thought the ghost were repeating it back. He was a little impressed that the spirit actually knew of the name - maybe in life it had spoken French.
There was a pause, and then it spelled out another word; p-r-e-t-t-y.
Ciel shivered. He could have sworn he felt something brush against his cheek.
Shaking off the sensation (which was probably just a floating piece of ash, or a rogue strand of hair), he continued with his questions. "How long have you been trapped here?"
l-o-n-g-t-i-m-e
A long time. Fair enough.
"And is anyone else here with you?"
The planchette moved back up to the top corner. 'No'.
Ciel's heart sank further, churning in the pit of his stomach. "So you're the only one left in this house?"
'Yes'.
So they really weren't here, then...
"Do you ever get lonely?"
Ciel wasnât quite sure why he asked. Maybe he just wanted the assurance that he wasn't the only one.
b-o-r-e-d, the planchette wrote.
It made sense, Ciel supposed. What kind of servant could this spirit possibly be in the afterlife if it had no one to serve?
"Is that why you decided to come forward and speak with me?" he asked.
'Yes'.
The planchette made its way back to the alphabet; l-e-s-s-b-o-r-e-d.
"Thatâs good then," Ciel found himself answering, the smallest of smiles tugging at the corners of his lips. This was hardly the conversation he had expected to get out of his first attempt at communicating with a spirit board; there was something strangely comforting about it, natural, almost. Like making a friend. "Is there anything you can tell me about yourself, Sebastian? Anything you remember from your life before?"
w-h-a-t-l-i-k-e
There was no question mark present alongside the board's alphabet - because the spirits were supposed to answer questions rather than ask them, Ciel realised. Still, there could be no harm in clarifying.
"What is it you used to do, before you end up here... like this?"
It was some time before the spirit responded; they clearly needed time to think, to reflect on those long forgotten memories - but eventually, the answer came, sliding across the printed letters. 'I help', it spelled.
"You help?" Ciel repeated back, "so you used to serve people?"
i-s-u-p-p-o-s-e
So this was a member of the old household staff, then. Ciel smiled to himself, pleased that all of the facts were falling into place, lining up with his deduction. Now, if the spirit could only remember what position they had held in their employment, then he might be able to find the records to reveal their true name. Perhaps if he came back with that, he could even remind this spirit of who they had once been; maybe even give them some closure of their own.
It wasn't the encounter he had been hoping for, but damned if he was going to allow the journey to go to waste.
"Do you remember what you did to serve?" Ciel tried his luck.
'Yes'.
Good. They were making some solid progress. "Were you a butler for the Phantomhive family?"
A quick swipe across the board. 'No'.
Less solid. "But you do remember what you were?" he pressed, trying again.
'Yes'.
"What were you then?"
A pause, filled with silent anticipation.
A gust of wind whipped through the dining room from the open conservatory, flickering the light of the half burned down candles and sending a chill down Ciel's spine - but not only from the sudden cold. He had been answered.
Not by the board; no, the planchette hadn't moved from its position in the top left corner. It was a voice that answered him, quiet and airy, whispered to him in the breeze, but there was no mistaking what it had said.
"A daemon."
Ciel scrambled to stand, kicking the board and planchette out of the circle in separate directions as he did so. He peered into the void, past where the small lights of the protective ring could reach; the darkness was palpable, seeming as though it could be alive itself. Breathing. Shifting. Watching him back. He reached for the small torch clipped to the front of his jacket, shining the beam around the room.
He saw nothing out of place; just dust and ashes, disused furniture and charred timbers - but the feeling was inescapable. The sensation that something lay waiting in the darkness, just beyond the reach of the torch beam, somewhere in the shadows that were just a little too solid.
Every fibre of his body was telling him to leave, now - and he felt in no position to chalk it up to any logical reason or imagination.
Ciel grabbed his things as quickly as he could, not bothering to pack up properly - unzipped duffle bag hiked over his shoulder, tripod tucked under one arm and the accursed talking board under the other - and headed straight back to the car, leaving the ring of candles to burn away into the pitch black on the dusty dining room floor. He pushed past the chain link gate of the fence, leaving it to swing closed on its hinges, unchained. Everything was flung unceremoniously into the boot of the car as he hurried to reach the driverâs seat, already starting the engine before he had even reached to slam the door closed.
The headlights flared to life, illuminating the long driveway; there was some relief in that, a certain safety to it, to be guided home by the light, away from this place of darkness and decay.
He let out a sigh of relief as the car rumbled along the drive and onto the road, leaving the oppressive, death-laden air of the old house behind him. The amber of streetlights bathed the way ahead in light, casting the shadows out of the young man's mind.
For the moment.
"Shit." Ciel muttered to himself as he rejoined the evening traffic, the clarity of his senses finally returning to him.
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