Disclaimer: Never. Sob.
Author's Note: Almost lost all of my notes for this by throwing the scrap paper that they were on into the trash. XD; The consequences of not having your fic notes properly organized, I suppose…
Warnings: Oh, you know. The usual. Depravity, torture, shouta. General Ciel abuse.
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Mobius
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I.
When he is lucky, the boots pass him by.
Luck has never been his lady.
II.
The floor is damp and cobbled, slippery with slime, spit, semen. Filth forever froths in the gummy grating between the serrated stone slabs, crusting like the gunk that collects beneath his nails, cracked and jagged and yellowed. His limbs are starting to take on a similar appearance, all sallow skin and gaunt angles; when he breathes, his back brushes against the rusting iron of the cage bars, and the sound is like the clattering of bone on bone.
He wishes he was nothing but bone.
In the far distance, there is the click-clack, click-clack of an approaching figure.
If he had not forgotten how to pray, he would do so.
III.
Occasionally, the boots are accompanied by the Question. Or perhaps the Question is accompanied by the boots.
It doesn't matter. He does his best to ignore them both.
IV.
Sometimes, the shrouded figures simply stand outside his prison, admiring him as if he were some sort of pet bird. Powerless, pathetic, and pretty. They coo and they fawn, and their ringleader swells with self-satisfaction, eyeing his robin in a depraved display of delight— his sneer a maiming mutilation that lurks behind the porcelain mystery of his mask.
Sometimes, they come to admire.
But usually, they come to hear the pet bird sing. Pound and pull and ram and grab, claws raking, flesh chafing, eagerly stuffing him with pieces and parts and poison as they hiss venomous endearments, moaning with delight as he shouts, screams, shrieks, screeches—!
They feed the little bird their splattered seed, snickering as he sobs.
V.
He is told that he is lucky, for only the favored get a cage of their own.
You were Chosen, they murmur, gnarled digits winding around the slats of his tiny tarnished world. You are special.
But he does not feel special. Instead, he feels alone. And sometimes, he wishes that he hadn't been Chosen— wishes that he had been brusquely thrust into one of the other corrosion-infested pens, made to stand too-close to the Sheppard's other sacrificial lambs: grimy girls, bile-bathed boys, malodorous men, weeping women. When the winds are right, the stench of fetid rot and rancid decay wafts in smoggy plumes from their distant quarters; it is enough to make him retch and vomit.
Even still…
He'd prefer their company to his deplorable status.
VI.
The boots stop outside his cage tonight. As the last click-clack fades into a looming silence, he feels his eyes burn behind a surge of salt— tears beading like bubbled blisters on the curve of his cheek.
A taloned hand brushes over his face. Gentle. Affectionate, almost. It stems the wetness before it can fall, and the gesture is so cloyingly sweet, it makes the cruelty that follows all the more difficult to bear.
VII.
He doesn't often speak. The shadows whisper that a caged bird has little else but his voice, but what was the point? God wasn't listening. And if He couldn't be bothered, why would anyone else?
VIII.
Every so often, the boots pass him by. Sometimes, he doesn't even see them; they pause far-earlier in this labyrinthine human zoo, fancy temporarily caught by some lesser animal.
On those nights, he is grateful… and yet, lonelier than ever before.
He curls up on the frozen floor, arms coiled around his freshly-scarred torso and the Question coiled around the shattered remains of his sanity.
IX.
Somewhere in the blackness just-beyond his bleary vision, moisture drips from an invisible crack in the cragged high ceiling. The frequent sound of liquid crystal shattering against the cobblestone, rhythmic as the beating of a tell-tale heart, echoes like the click-clack, click-clack of those goddamn fucking boots, and it nearly drives him insane.
X.
It is difficult to decide what he hates more: being aggressively taken (no, stolen) against the squealing bars of his cage, naked body bruised and battered and nearly-broken as he is sadistically slammed into again and again and again… Or when he is tenderly tupped against the ground-altar-ringleader's bed, covered in kisses and butterfly touches as whispers of "eternity" weave a spider web of his insides.
He is given release, but is never released.
XI.
He doesn't often speak. The shadows whisper that a caged bird has little else but his voice, but what was the point? God wasn't listening. And if He couldn't be bothered, why would anyone else?
But sometimes, the Question will slither, snake-like, into the deepest corners of his mind— will worm its way under his skin, writhing like a maggot, festering like a boil. A viral infection, it pollutes the entirety of his being… whatever remains of it, anyway. And in the wake of his perpetual suffering, he is no longer strong enough to keep the disease from spreading.
When the boots stop tonight, his jaw falls open… and, with a skull-like chattering, the Question tumbles out.
"Why did you lie?"
A pause. The boots shift, swing, shimmer; heel meets heel as the visitor lowers himself into an elegant crouch. Parasitic darkness has always acted as his mantle, but his features are distinguishable nevertheless… have always been, really, if one knew how to find them.
"I have never lied."
The boy scowls, sunken eyes glaring from the emaciated lump that serves as his face. "You said that you would eat me," he reminds, and his voice is little more than a reedy rasp— the sound of fraying vocal cords scuff-scratch-scraping against one another, stretched too thin in the knobby tube of his throat.
His companion's response is a Cheshire leer. "But I do eat you," he corrects the captured canary, in a velvet purr that fails to cloak his obvious contentment. Vermillion eyes flicker through the heady haze of gloom— the only light remaining in this blackened abyss of a universe. "Quite frequently."
The other's husky chuckles swallow the child's weary groan, the sounds of shifting leather and discarded scraps of cotton. The floor tonight, it seems. He wishes he could muster the strength to fight against the probing fingers, to offer even a token bout of resistance, but no— his body, his mind, his soul, his heart. Nothing belongs to him, anymore.
There is nothing he can do.
He is lowered, straddled; his head meets the cobblestone. He can't bear to look Heavenward, so he closes his eyes. And in the wake of such exertion, his mouth— again— falls open…
"…this is hell." It is a whisper, a whimper. A breathless gasp that escapes before he can suck it back down; by the time he realizes his mistake, it is too late.
An acidic kiss tingles against the flesh of his eyelid, fizzling as he flinches. In the lingering touch of those licentious lips, Ciel can feel Sebastian's serpentine smile.
"Indeed it is, young master."
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