Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Ciel sat at his desk, afternoon sunlight pooling across the papers he’d abandoned hours ago. The warmth outside did nothing to ease the tightness in his chest. His expression soured as he reread the Queen’s letter—the handwriting precise, cold, and final.

With a sharp exhale, he crumpled the page and hurled it across the room. It struck Sebastian’s shoe with a soft thud. Sebastian, lounging opposite him, retrieved it without comment and smoothed the creases before reading.

Her Majesty required Ciel to resume full watchdog duties. Immediately. No more partial leave. And, as if that weren’t enough, she added that as a married man and father, he was “naturally expected to consider a spare.”

Ciel’s jaw tightened.

“I do not need a spare.”

Silence settled over the room, warm and oppressive. Behind the shut nursery door, Lux slept, finally. Naptime was Ciel’s only sliver of solitude, the only time he wasn’t lifting a pair of arms reaching up to be held.

Lux, at nine months, was all soft devotion. He was tender, curious, and shy. His first word mama still lived in Ciel’s ribs like a bruise and a blessing. He followed Ciel everywhere, tugging at his trouser leg, babbling triumphantly whenever he discovered a new sound. Ciel adored him. Absorbing that same intensity in return was harder.

Sebastian lowered the letter. “This will require us to stay at the London townhouse.”

Ciel looked up sharply. His contract seal pulsed faintly beneath his eyepatch.

“We can’t take him,” he whispered. “It isn’t safe. Not if I’m working.”

“But the work is unavoidable.”

“Yes. But he needs me.”

I need him.

Lux’s new independence had blindsided him. Ciel laughed more these days, clutched him more tightly, cherished every clumsy reach for his shirt. And with that joy came fear—old, sharp, unwanted. Fear that Lux would not survive childhood. Fear that happiness could be taken again.

The Queen’s mention of a “spare” made his stomach twist.

“He will be safe with family,” Sebastian said gently.

Ciel rubbed his brow. Lux had only just begun sleeping in his own room. Their bedtime ritual was important—Sebastian’s bath and story, then Ciel breastfeeding and rocking him until sleep softened his features. Leaving him behind felt like losing something vital.

“Lady Elizabeth will not mind,” Sebastian added. “It is only for a short time.”

Ciel swallowed.

“…I suppose.”

The Queen’s assignment, at first, had sounded deceptively simple. Investigate the author Marie Stopes. But the attached brief revealed why Her Majesty wanted him specifically.

Marie Stopes was no common agitator. She was a scientist, a respected academic, the youngest Doctor of Science in Britain. And according to rumor, she was preparing a book that London’s publishers didn’t dare release.

A manuscript titled Married Love. A book that dared to discuss marital intimacy openly. Scientifically. Boldly.

It was said to contain:

• frank discussion of sexual pleasure
  
  
• advocacy for spacing pregnancies
  
  
• descriptions of the “dark moods” and disturbances of the spirits that often follow confinement
  
  
• cautious guidance on contraception
  
  
• insistence that women deserved desire, not duty
  
  
• warnings about the mental and physical toll of childbirth
  
  

Publishers had rejected it under moral pretense:

“Improper for a woman to write of such things.”

“Contraception invites sin.”

“This will corrupt households.”

The Queen feared it would undermine the Church, reshape domestic expectations, or allow couples—women especially—to question obligations that had always remained silent.

Ciel’s stomach tightened as he read the list of concerns.

Because every accusation lined up uncomfortably with truths he’d lived.

That childbirth wounded. That desire became tangled with fear. That the melancholia that crept in after childbed did not make one weak—only wounded. That intimacy changed after trauma.

The Queen wanted to know whether Stopes posed a threat to propriety. Ciel suspected the real question was far more dangerous: Was she a threat to morality… or was she telling the truth?

The following week, they left for London. They dropped Lux at the Midfords’. Lizzy insisted on three nights:

“one day to work, one day to think, and one day in case something unexpected happens.”

Ciel agreed. Barely.

The first night was agony.

His arms felt wrong, empty, and restless. His chest ached with the absence of weight and warmth. Every hour without Lux’s little voice scraped another layer from his composure. He paced, tried to read, tried to write, but nothing soothed the restless panic coiled beneath his ribs.

Sebastian was quieter too, moving with a stiffness Ciel recognized but didn’t comment on.

They were both enduring withdrawal. Neither said it.

The warm August air felt too still without Lux.

The townhouse grew hushed as dusk settled over London.

Ciel washed up, changed into his nightshirt, and attempted to read by lamplight, but the words slid uselessly across the page. The emptiness pressed harder at night. The August heat made the room feel too large and his body too restless.

He glanced at the bed, and a flicker of nerves ran through him. Months of distance, anxiety, and exhaustion had carved space he no longer knew how to cross.

Yet tonight, with the heat humming in the walls, something tugged at him. Something lonely. Something hungry.

He looked toward the window, where Sebastian was undoing his cuffs. And the night shifted.

Ciel sat on the bed’s edge, unable—unwilling—to look away as Sebastian undressed by the open window. The heavy summer air slowed everything. Sebastian slipped off his coat, then his waistcoat, then unbuttoned his shirt with unhurried precision. The dying sunlight traced his collarbones as he freed the fabric from his shoulders.

Ciel’s breath caught. Distance had never dulled Sebastian’s ability to unravel him.

Sebastian paused, sensing the stare.

“Would you like to assist me with my trousers,” he asked, low and amused, “or are you content observing?”

Ciel flushed to his chest, fingers curling into the mattress.

“Sebastian—!”

The teasing had built for weeks—lingering glances, bold touches—but Ciel had always stepped back before things tipped too far. Normally, he could force restraint.

Not now.

Heat pooled low in his body, sharp and insistent. And beneath it, a deeper ache pulsed under his skin, fullness swelling painfully in his chest.

He winced.

“…Actually,” he said quietly, “can you assist me?”

Sebastian’s demeanor changed instantly.

“Of course.”

He crossed the room without hesitation, kneeling between Ciel’s parted thighs. From this angle, their eyes were level close enough that Ciel felt his breath.

Sebastian finished unbuttoning Ciel’s shirt with slow, deliberate care, slipping the fabric from his shoulders and tossing it aside without his usual precision.

Ciel drew in a shaky breath. He’d laid this trap for himself and stepped right into it. All he’d actually wanted was a warm towel.

Sebastian began gently, circling the swell of Ciel’s chest with feather-light touches. His fingers drifted toward Ciel’s right nipple, and when they brushed close, a thin pearled tear of milk escaped.

Ciel inhaled sharply.

Sebastian’s eyes flicked up, his smile quiet and knowing.

“You may continue,” Ciel whispered.

Sebastian obeyed. He teased each nipple with careful precision. His fingers first, then thumbs, drawing small circles, testing reactions, coaxing shivers from Ciel’s trembling body. The moan that escaped him was half-shame, half-relief.

Warm milk slicked his skin, heightening everything.

Sebastian blew a soft breath over one nipple, and Ciel arched, the cool air turning pleasure razor-sharp.

Ciel reached up, cupping Sebastian’s face and pulling him into a soft kiss. Sebastian didn’t stop touching him. As they kissed, he pinched Ciel’s nipple with experimental pressure.

The sound that tore from Ciel’s throat could have shamed a whore.

Sebastian continued, unhurried and thorough, reading every gasp and tremor. Practicality drowned under the weight of pleasure.

He mouthed along Ciel’s neck, heat trailing behind, before lowering to his chest. One hand cupped Ciel’s left breast as his mouth closed over it.

He latched.

Ciel gasped—a sharp, broken sound—as pleasure hit him. His orgasm took him before he realized it was coming. His body shook violently, fingers twisting in Sebastian’s hair, holding him there, needing him there.

Sebastian stayed.

He nursed softly, licking, kissing, gently biting as Ciel trembled beneath him. His tongue moved in slow, deliberate motions, dragging the aftershocks out of him until Ciel’s breath came in weak, dizzy gasps.

When Sebastian moved to the right breast, Ciel let out a helpless whimper—half relief, half surrender.

He gave in completely.

Ciel woke slowly the next morning, the light warm behind the curtains and the air heavy. His body felt loose, tender, unburdened. The sharp ache beneath his ribs had eased into something quiet.

Sebastian had risen already, but the sheets still held his warmth. Ciel touched the space absently, remembering the way he’d let himself come undone.

For the first time in months, he stretched without wincing.

There was work to attend to. An investigation with consequences, but for one brief moment, he allowed himself a flicker of confidence. A feeling he had not touched since before the pregnancy.

By the time he dressed and joined Sebastian in the study downstairs, the materials for the Married Love case were already waiting.

Ciel inhaled slowly, steadying himself.

Night had changed him. Now the work would, too.

Chapter Text

They started early the next morning. Sebastian’s bribes produced a stack of rejection letters. publishers dripping disdain in thick, moralizing ink:

“Improper for a woman to write of such subjects.”

“Contraception invites sin.”

“Pleasure corrupts the mind.”

Each line struck Ciel more deeply than he expected. Because for months, his own thoughts had echoed with similar venom: quiet, persistent cruelties he’d never dared examine

that the maternal melancholia he’d suffered after confinement was a personal weakness;
that the misalignment of mind and body he’d lived with since youth marked him as misshapen;
that childbirth had left a strain upon his frame that tainted his manhood;
that seeking pleasure after a shock to the system was indecent;
that intimacy after such an ordeal was dangerous.

The publishers had made Stopes into a heretic. Ciel had done the same to himself.

When Sebastian returned with the manuscript, Ciel locked himself in the study and read. The chapters landed like blows: clinical, unapologetic, startlingly humane

pleasure is mutual
marriage relies on communication
childbirth wounds mind and body
recovery demands patience
spacing pregnancies preserves mental vigour
desire without fear is a right

His breath stalled.

Stopes described the dark moods following confinement—born of physiological upheaval after birth—as natural rather than shameful.

She wrote of nervous exhaustion after confinement, of weakness of the mind brought on by childbed, of a disturbance of the nerves occasioned by childbirth.

Ciel lowered the pages. He had not been weak. He had been wounded.

They moved on to interviews. The midwife spoke softly, as though each truth carried weight:

“Some never heal after childbirth. Some lose their lives. Some lose themselves for a time. Spacing children saves families.”

Ciel’s pulse lurched. Spacing. Safety. Control over what comes next. He had lived with that dread each day but never named it.

The church matrons were harsher: rigid smiles, sharpened scripture.

“Women must bear children.”

“Pleasure tempts sin.”

“A wife’s desire is irrelevant.”

A distress of identity curled through him, almost choking him. He had carried a child. And they would use that to define him. To confine him. Their language reduced him to the female constitution, a phrase that scraped against every part of him—yet he had no alternative if he wished to speak of his own biology. Stopes was fighting that suffocation.

By the time evening settled over the townhouse, Ciel felt drained in a way that wasn’t purely physical. The manuscript had shaken him. Its clarity, its compassion, its language for wounds he still couldn’t name aloud. His mind felt rubbed raw, too full and too empty at once.

He tried to write notes for the morning. He tried to read a little more. Nothing stayed.

The townhouse was warm in the heat and quiet enough that he could hear his own heartbeat. The stillness unsettled him. The emptiness of his arms unsettled him more.

He changed into his nightshirt mechanically, hands trembling with a heaviness that lived deeper than flesh—a heaviness born of the lingering effects of labor, of the slow mending of wounds unseen, of a disquiet that rendered affection perilous.

He longed for something grounding, something familiar that didn’t demand thought. When he stepped into the bedroom, Sebastian was already undressing by lamplight. Ciel’s breath caught.

He hadn’t expected tonight to echo the first night at the townhouse… and yet his body reacted with the same immediate, hungry tremor. And when Sebastian looked at him—just looked—what Ciel needed became painfully obvious.

The second night brought the same fervent attention as the first. By the time Sebastian had sucked him dry, Ciel had come at least three times—none of which involved Sebastian touching his cunt directly. And clearly, Sebastian had no intention of stopping.

Ciel lay on his back at the edge of the bed, hips angled toward him, legs spread wide. At some point—Ciel couldn’t remember when—Sebastian had stripped off his trousers, leaving him in nothing but his panties.

Sebastian’s mouth found him again, kissing slowly along the tender inner thigh. He dragged his lips down one leg and up the other, switching sides to repeat the same torturous path.

His kisses grew rougher; every so often, he caught a small pinch of Ciel’s inner thigh between his teeth, just enough pressure to leave heat blooming beneath the skin. Soft hickeys formed where no one else would ever see.

When he crossed to the other leg, he lingered near Ciel’s cunt, kissing him through the thin fabric. The sensation made Ciel gasp, hips shifting, desperate for more.

“Sebastian… please…” Ciel’s voice broke into a begging whimper. 

Sebastian didn’t speed up. He kept that maddeningly slow pace, letting anticipation coil tight. Before removing Ciel’s panties, he kissed his way upward, stopping just above Ciel’s clit to press soft, reverent kisses to his mons.

“T-take them off now,” Ciel demanded, voice high with desperation. “That’s an order.”

“Yes, my lord.”

Sebastian obeyed slowly. After slipping Ciel’s panties off, he lowered his mouth and began tracing feather-light kisses and licks around his cunt and clit. Only the soft edges of his lips grazed him—just enough to send shivers, never enough to satisfy—as he circled and teased him relentlessly.

Ciel was already shaking, his whole body pulled tight with a desperation that bordered on pain. He was so close he could barely breathe. And Sebastian, attuned to every twitch, slowed the instant he sensed it. Barely, but enough to make Ciel’s entire body jolt in frustration.

“Sebastian— please—” Ciel’s voice cracked. Sebastian only hummed against his thigh, a low reminder of who controlled the pace.

That tiny reduction stretched out the edge unbearably. Pleasure coiled hotter and tighter with nowhere to go, the tension building until Ciel’s entire being centered on that final, impossible release. Sebastian was doing it intentionally—letting Ciel drown in that frantic, pre-orgasmic bliss far longer than he could bear.

When Sebastian finally wrapped his lips around Ciel’s clit, sucking gently but with perfect precision, Ciel let out a sound so raw it barely counted as speech. His thighs slipped open wider and wider, as if begging for more on their own. Tears spilled from the sheer intensity.

“Good boy,” Sebastian murmured against him, the vibration making Ciel jerk. “Open for me.”

He did—helplessly, instinctively. His hands tightened in Sebastian’s hair, not to guide but to anchor himself as his sanity frayed. His legs trembled violently, caught between pushing forward and pulling away.

Sebastian didn’t let him choose. One hand pressed Ciel’s hips down firmly, keeping him exactly where he wanted him. Slow, deliberate circles around his clit kept Ciel whimpering.

“You’ll come when I allow it,” Sebastian murmured, calm and commanding. “Not a second sooner.”

Ciel’s breath hitched—body wanting to obey even as it begged to collapse.

Then Sebastian eased two fingers inside. Slow at first, then with confidence, claiming pressure that made Ciel cry out. His walls clutched around the intrusion, desperate for it.

Sebastian’s mouth on his clit, his fingers curling just right, his firm grip on Ciel’s hips—together, it hit harder than anything he’d ever felt. His thighs shook, his back arched, and soft, desperate sobs escaped him uncontrollably.

“Look at you,” Sebastian murmured, pulling back just enough to speak. “Falling apart for me.”

Ciel couldn’t respond. His entire world narrowed to the heat between his legs, the ache building in his stomach, the voice commanding him.

He didn’t know if he had ever felt anything like this: this sharp, blinding ecstasy, this helpless submission, this dangerous closeness. And as the pleasure neared a breaking point so intense it felt like it might tear him open, he realized he didn’t want to escape it.

He wanted Sebastian to push him over.

Ciel gasped in broken, uneven bursts, his entire body trembling as Sebastian’s fingers curled with wicked precision. The focused pressure on his clit pushed him closer—so close the pleasure bordered on unbearable, a tight, scorching knot low in his stomach.

“Sebastian— I’m— I can’t—” Ciel choked out, half-sobbing.

Sebastian didn’t relent. If anything, he became more deliberate, holding Ciel effortlessly in place.

“You can,” he said softly, a thread of command in every word. His lips brushed Ciel’s clit, sending a violent shudder through him. “And you will. But only when I tell you.”

Ciel whimpered, clutching his hair—pure begging.

“Look at you,” Sebastian breathed. “Shaking so beautifully for me. Hold on.”

Ciel tried. God, he tried. But the pleasure twisted tighter and tighter, stretching him past his limit. His thighs quivered, his back arched, and a choked sob tore out.

“Please,” he whispered. “Please… let me…”

Sebastian finally gave him what he needed.

“Come for me,” he commanded, low and absolute. “Now.”

The words detonated inside him.

Ciel shattered.

His orgasm tore through him with brutal force, stealing his breath. His thighs clamped around Sebastian’s head despite the firm hold, his hips jerked uncontrollably, and he sobbed—loud, desperate, undone.

Sebastian didn’t ease up. He rode the wave with him, mouth still moving gently, fingers curled deep to pull every last pulse. Each contraction wrung another cry from Ciel, his voice breaking.

It felt endless—bright, consuming, almost painful in its intensity. His whole body trembled violently around Sebastian’s fingers.

Only when Ciel finally collapsed into the sheets, limp and shaking, did Sebastian lift his mouth from him. Ciel’s breath came sharp and uneven, tears clinging to his lashes. He couldn’t speak.

Sebastian kissed the inside of his thigh—gentle now. His hands steadied Ciel’s hips, soothing rather than restraining.

“Easy,” Sebastian murmured. “You did beautifully.”

Ciel whimpered at the praise. Sebastian moved up his body, bracing himself so he wouldn’t crush him. He kissed the tears from Ciel’s cheeks, then pressed a soft kiss to his swollen lips.

Ciel leaned into it helplessly.

“Breathe,” Sebastian whispered when Ciel’s inhale hitched. He smoothed sweat-damp hair from his forehead. “You’re alright. I’ve got you.”

Ciel’s fingers curled weakly into the bedsheets. “Sebastian…” he breathed, small and overwhelmed.

“I’m here.”

Sebastian continued kissing anywhere that helped bring him back: temples, cheeks, the corner of his mouth. His touch was warm.

After a few quiet moments, Ciel finally managed, “I… don’t think I’ve ever… felt anything like that.”

Sebastian brushed his thumb along his jaw.

“I know,” he murmured. “That’s why I held you down. You would’ve slipped away otherwise.”

A shiver ran through Ciel. He clung a little tighter.

“Rest,” Sebastian whispered.

He gathered Ciel into his arms, pulling him gently to his chest. His steady touch guided Ciel’s breathing back to normal as the tremors faded. Ciel melted into him, exhausted but safe, cheek pressed to Sebastian’s collarbone.

Ciel woke late the next morning, sore in ways he hadn’t been in a long time—but steadier. The townhouse was bright with sun, the air heavy but no longer suffocating.

For a moment, he lay still, letting the remnants of the night settle—his body tired, his chest warm, his nerves quiet. A soft ache lingered in his muscles, but his mind felt clearer than it had in months.

He rose slowly. Sebastian had already prepared tea and arranged the manuscript pages for review. Ciel touched the papers with hands that no longer shook.

The book still frightened him with its accuracy and honesty, but the fear no longer held him. Something jagged in him had softened, eased by the night’s impossible tenderness.

He inhaled slowly.

Today, he would finish the investigation.
Today, he would write the report.
Today, he would name truths he had avoided since the birth—truths about the unsettled state of the body after labor, about soundness of mind, about the rights Stopes insisted were not sin but survival.

Ciel straightened, took up his pen, and began.

Chapter Text

By morning, he had enough to write. The report was sharp, logical, and unassailable: intended for married couples, grounded in science, unlikely to influence the masses. Its medical sections could improve maternal survival; its purpose was therapeutic, not dangerous. He signed it with a steady hand. Officially, a clinical assessment. Privately, a declaration of autonomy.

The Queen had ordered the manuscript examined as a threat to propriety. Ciel saw instead what it truly unsettled—something older and far more insidious: the belief that suffering was natural and pleasure forbidden.

Stopes had written the opposite. In doing so, she gave him language for pains he had never been able to name: wounds of mind and body dismissed as maternal melancholia, nervous exhaustion after confinement, disturbances of the nerves brought on by childbirth, the slow mending of injuries no one thought to see.

He drafted the final version with care, pared down to facts alone. Cold. Precise. Irrefutable.

The manuscript posed no political risk. It supported emotional stability. Its arguments were too measured, too intellectual to sway the masses, and its medical guidance could only improve maternal outcomes.

He sealed it with his ring. It was the most personal document he had ever delivered to the Crown.

By the time evening settled over the townhouse, Ciel had finished the report.

The ink dried neatly on the parchment, every line steady, every conclusion airtight. It should have granted closure—an end to the assignment, the interviews, the last remnants of an investigation that had dragged him through memories he preferred buried. But instead, a strange, hushed stillness gathered around him, pressing inward from the corners of the room.

It was their final night in London. Tomorrow, they would retrieve Lux from the Midfords and return home. Tomorrow, the townhouse would fall silent again. Tonight, though, it felt far too large for just the two of them.

The quiet sharpened everything: the heat trapped in the walls, the subtle creak of the floorboards, the restless tension beneath Ciel’s skin. Stopes’s clarity should have anchored him. Instead, he felt peeled open, as though the manuscript had scraped at the very nerves that had frayed during confinement.

Sebastian sat at the edge of the bed, his posture attuned to the fragile tension in the room.

Ciel moved toward him without consciously deciding to. His hands trembled, not from fear, but from something far older and more complicated: the remnants of the dread of marital relations after an ordeal, the shrinking from the marriage-bed due to former suffering, the unsettled state of the body after labor, the misalignment of mind and body that had shadowed him since childhood.

Something between them shifted. There was no single moment that marked the change. No cue. No plan. Something simply broke open.

The place felt too big with only the two of them inside it, the quiet stretching through the walls and floorboards in a way that made every sound, every breath, every shift of fabric, every heartbeat feel amplified. Impossible to ignore. Ciel knelt between Sebastian’s thighs, palms pressed to warm skin, drinking in the closeness with a hunger he never voiced aloud. The months without real intimacy hadn’t destroyed them, but they had marked the edges. It left faint cracks in the way, even a small distance between them suddenly felt fraught, like a risk neither one wanted to take.

Sebastian watched him with a tension bordering on feral restraint, his hand resting lightly in Ciel’s hair. Not tugging or steering, just resting, absorbing the contact, grounding himself in the proof that Ciel was right in front of him, touching him by choice. Ciel pretended he didn’t crave that reassurance just as badly. He leaned down and pressed slow, deliberate kisses along Sebastian’s lower stomach. Beneath his controlled pace, a subtle tremor betrayed how tightly wounded he truly was. A relief mixing with want, need twisting with the ache of how long it had been. Sebastian’s breath stuttered, not just from the kiss but from what it meant: Ciel choosing him, opening this space, reaching for him again.

“Been a while,” Sebastian murmured, voice low and stripped of pretense.

Ciel didn’t glance up.

“Then you’d better appreciate it.”

Sebastian’s fingers tightened. Ciel didn’t ease into anything. He took Sebastian into his mouth with immediate, unhesitating force—swallowing him to the root with a wet choke that sent heat snapping through both of them. Messy kisses dragged down the length of him; drool and precum smeared across Ciel’s lips. He drew back only long enough to slick two fingers over his mouth, spreading the sheen deliberately.

“You’re already dripping,” Ciel said, a quiet, cutting taunt. “You can’t even keep yourself together for me.”

Sebastian groaned, composure slipping at the edges.

“Good,” Ciel added, grinning. “That’s how I want you.”

When he finally pulled back, Sebastian looked as if he’d been dragged right to the edge and kept hovering there—steady by discipline alone, jaw set against how undone he already was. Ciel wiped his mouth with a careless flick of his wrist and climbed onto Sebastian’s lap, settling over his hips with a slow, deliberate press. Their breaths mingled close enough to feel necessary. Sebastian’s hands slid up Ciel’s thighs with a kind of greedy reverence, mapping familiar lines with the urgency of someone painfully touch-starved. Ciel let him for a moment, letting Sebastian relearn him, letting the tension stretch taut between them. Then he caught Sebastian’s wrists and pinned them against the mattress.

“Not yet,” he said, voice steady but eyes wide. “I’m the one calling this.”

Sebastian’s jaw worked.

“Then take it.”

The words hit Ciel deep. That tone—obedient but edged, devoted without surrendering strength—struck something inside him he’d been fighting to keep steady. He shifted over Sebastian’s hips, thighs trembling with anticipation, months of distance condensed into this one electric moment. Before moving, he leaned in until their noses almost brushed.

“One rule,” he said quietly. “I don’t want your seed.”

Sebastian didn’t question it.

“Of course.”

Ciel nodded, satisfied. He needed control tonight. And he needed touch like air. He lowered himself onto Sebastian in one breathless slide, and they both exhaled as if they’d surfaced from deep water. Sebastian’s hands returned to Ciel’s waist, firmer now, as if even he couldn’t hold back entirely. Touch-starved. Both of them. The hunger between them sharpened every point of contact until it felt almost volatile.

Ciel pressed his forehead to Sebastian’s and whispered, “Don’t lose it before I tell you to.”

Sebastian’s fingers dug deeper into his hips, breath breaking around the edges.

“I won’t,” he rasped. “Not unless you break first.”

The low challenge burned between them. Ciel moved slowly at first with control. The rhythm started as a measured grind, enough to make Sebastian’s grip tighten before he forced it to ease. His fraying restraint sent heat straight through Ciel.

“You’re holding back,” Ciel murmured against his jaw.

Sebastian’s eyes snapped open, pupils blown wide, red pooling like a warning.

“For you.”

Ciel smirked, lips hovering close but never touching.

“I didn’t tell you to hold back.”

Sebastian’s composure cracked, fingers flexing hard on his waist. Ciel rolled his hips once—slow and taunting—before riding him harder, using Sebastian’s body exactly how he wanted. The way Sebastian grit his teeth, the strain in his breath—Ciel felt it pulse under his skin, feeding something raw inside him. He wanted that response. He needed it. A sharper tension coiled between them—the kind born from months of being untouched the way they actually needed. Sebastian’s hands slid up Ciel’s back, fingertips digging in.

“You’re going to break me,” Sebastian warned, voice low and taut.

Ciel leaned down, lips brushing his ear.

“Good.”

The word shuddered through Sebastian. Ciel pulled back enough to watch the reaction cross his face.

“You missed this,” he said, not bothering to make it a question.

“I missed you.”

The honesty hit Ciel like a fist. His throat tightened, but he swallowed it and rolled his hips again, forcing a choked breath out of Sebastian. Sebastian’s hands clamped around Ciel’s thighs with bruising force.

“Ciel—”

“Don’t,” Ciel snapped, voice sharp. “Don’t say my name like that.”

“Why?” Sebastian growled. “Because you’ll lose control?”

Ciel swallowed hard. Because he already was. To steady himself, he grabbed Sebastian’s wrists and shoved them into the pillows overhead. Sebastian didn’t resist; he surrendered to the hold with intent, eyes dark and fixed on him. Ciel’s voice dropped, tight and precise.

“Because I’m the one in control tonight. Not you.”

Sebastian’s breath hit his cheek.

“Then. Take. It.”

Ciel did. He moved with deliberate weight—slow, heavy, claiming. Sebastian’s back arched, teeth clenched, his composure unraveling in small, involuntary fractures. Heat thickened around them—months of distance collapsing into each thrust, each breath. Sebastian’s voice broke into a low warning.

“Tell me when you’re close.”

Ciel lowered himself until their foreheads touched, breaths mingling hot and uneven.

“I’ll tell you,” he whispered. “And you’ll obey.”

Sebastian’s response came out ragged.

“Yes, my lord.”

The tension tightened unbearably.

Sebastian didn’t expect the sound Ciel made when he shifted him forward onto his elbows. It wasn’t soft. It wasn’t restrained. It tore out of him raw and loud enough to echo off the townhouse walls. He’d missed that. Missed the way Ciel’s voice broke before anything else did. Ciel tried to swallow the next noise, but it ripped free anyway—louder, closer to a cry than anything composed. His breath hitched again as Sebastian’s grip steadied him, and another involuntary sound climbed out of his throat, impossible to contain.

“Don’t—ah—don’t just move me like that—!” Ciel’s voice cracked, pitch climbing without warning.

Sebastian’s breath shuddered against his shoulder blade, his hands tightening on Ciel’s hips with a restraint that felt dangerously close to breaking.

“You’re loud tonight,” he growled, voice frayed at the edges.

“Shut up,” Ciel snapped. And then fell into another helpless sound when Sebastian adjusted his hold, the shift sending heat through him like a struck nerve.

Ciel’s fingers curled into the sheets, clawing deep lines into the fabric as if he needed something to hold onto. Every second dragged another raw, unshielded sound out of him—ragged breaths, broken curses, fragments of Sebastian’s name he couldn’t swallow down.

“Sebastian—don’t—don’t you dare stop—!”

His voice cracked again, higher, desperate in a way he hadn’t been in months. The townhouse walls carried every tone, every shuddering breath, amplifying them in a way that made the moment feel even more volatile. Sebastian leaned over him, lips brushing the shell of his ear, voice strained and low.

“Keep saying my name like that,” he warned, “and I won’t hold back.”

The choked noise that left Ciel at that sent a visible tremor down Sebastian’s back. Ciel’s entire body trembled, his breath breaking apart, voice rising as though he couldn’t rein it in even if he wanted to.

“Sebastian, I’m— I’m close, I’m—”

That was all it took to snap the thread of restraint Sebastian had been clinging to.

“Turn over,” he rasped, the words pulled from him on a wrecked breath. “Now—”

Ciel barely had time to brace before Sebastian flipped him, keeping his promise by finishing across Ciel’s back. Ciel’s shout echoed off the walls, louder than anything from the previous nights, the sound sharp and startling even to himself. The townhouse didn’t muffle it; it carried up through the hallways, through the open beams.  When Sebastian finally steadied himself—breathless, shaking—he hovered over Ciel, bracing his weight on trembling arms. His forehead dropped against the curve of Ciel’s neck, breath coming hot and uneven.

Ciel was still panting, voice raw, throat worn from how hard he’d fallen apart. Sebastian managed one ruined, half-amused murmur,

“You’re going to wake the neighbors…”

Ciel let out a breathless laugh.

“They’re not close enough.”

Ciel woke the next morning with the remnants of the night written unmistakably across his skin—bruises blooming along his hips, a deep ache nestled in his muscles, sensitivity lingering like a breath against exposed nerves. But instead of the hollowness that had plagued him since the birth, a strange steadiness rose in its place.

Sunlight filtered through the curtains, heavy with warmth. The townhouse felt quiet again—catching its breath after nights charged with something painfully human. He sat up slowly, breathing through the tenderness in his thighs, letting his body remember each moment without recoiling from it. And for the first time in months… he did not mind remembering.

As he dressed, a familiar tightness stirred beneath his ribs—not the crushing maternal melancholia that had gripped him during the first weeks after confinement, nor the weakness of the mind brought on by childbed that had made mornings feel insurmountable. Instead, it was a gentler echo, an aftershadow.

Those humors had not vanished. He still feared loss. Still feared joy’s fragility. Still feared that Lux’s small, vital heartbeat could disappear as swiftly as everything in his childhood had. But the fears no longer ruled him. Stopes’s words had struck deep with naming injuries of mind and constitution that no physician had dared describe plainly. Injuries that were not weakness, but wounds. The kind of strain childbirth leaves upon the frame makes it slow to heal.

Admitting this—even to himself—embarrassed him. Confessing that a woman’s scientific treatise had offered him understanding he had been too proud, too guarded, too afraid to seek felt mortifying. So he did not tell Sebastian. But when he descended the stairs, Sebastian’s gaze swept over him with a subtle, assessing softness, noticing the shift.

Recognition without intrusion. Warmth without a single word spoken. Ciel didn’t acknowledge it. Sebastian didn’t name it. But the air between them felt altered—less brittle, less clouded by shadow, no longer haunted by the violent distress of the nerves that had once made touch perilous.

He wasn’t healed. Not entirely. But he was no longer drowning in the darker moods that follow confinement. For now, that was enough.

Sebastian was waiting in the foyer—perfectly composed, gloves on, the carriage prepared, the luggage arranged with exacting care. Everything is as it should be. And still, when their eyes met, something quiet moved between them. No apologies. No confessions. No softness. Only recognition: of what they had survived, of what had shifted, and of what lay ahead once they stepped outside the townhouse.

It was time to go home.