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“How big is the cosmos anyway?”
Cold moonlight spreads all over the big bedroom. Silence hugs the night around the mansion and lurks inside long corridors and lonely rooms full of carefully selected expensive items. All the crickets went silent already. The leaves do not rustle. Young Earl is seated on a murmur window sill of his room, propping his head melancholically on his bare knee. His deep blue eye seemed to absorb the entire breadth of the starry sky. At this moment, one could believe it was a masterfully crafted doll rather than a breathing person: the white shirt and pearly skin shone under the torrential rays of the guardian of darkness.
Ciel, however, had never believed that the Moon protects the darkness. It shines too brightly sometimes for the likes of that. For him, it was always just the weaker sister of the Sun, trying to keep the world from darkness while the other one slept. The heavenly body was unlucky enough to witness all the horrors that the Sun could burn during the day. That is a rather romantic comparison, one that is far from scientific reasoning, but everyone needs to dive into philosophy from time to time to avoid dying of boredom.
“Would you like a lecture on astronomy, my lord?” an almost-teasing voice came from inside the room.
An unnaturally white body stretched out at the far end of the clean starched sheets. From the doorway, the bed is concealed by a curtain, and only a graceful silhouette can be seen. But from the window side, you can observe a man propping his head up with his palm. At first glance, he looks like a man in his twenties or thirties. But the longer you look, the harder it is to say how old this person is, as the sharp face is so perfect that it erases the very concept of age; the body lying on its side was a flawless model of human anatomy as if the muscles on the torso grew exactly by the book. Such a physique belonged either to the work of a possessed sculptor or to the devil himself.
“Do not exercise that sharp tongue of yours now, just answer the question,” the young man raised his voice, keeping his head up from the sky in the window.
In response, the man on the bed hummed softly.
“Who, me? Master, I would never. But as you wish," he rolled onto his back, putting his hand behind his head, eyes fixed on the ceiling, but at the same time looking somewhere else. “It is so vast that a human mind cannot comprehend its scale.”
“And yours can?” the boy asked doubtfully, finally putting his bent leg down against the other, now sitting with his back to the landscape outside the window.
“Hmm. That would be a no, I do not think I can. But feeling the volume is much easier for me," the usually brownish-golden eyes now seem almost ruby as they meet the ocean depths.
Ciel tilted his head thoughtfully to one side – one could feel the gears shifting in his small head, but it was the essence of his thoughts that always amazed Sebastian in the end, because it was impossible to predict exactly why the Earl was asking such a question. But it always interested him. This person could be thinking about the insignificance of his role in the picture of the universe, hatred of the indifference of higher powers, or simply about the dry theories of scientists. Or about cakes.
Eventually, Ciel shared some of his thoughts: "I thought you should know these things innately.”
Sebastian raised his perfect eyebrow, surprised at such a bold statement. The young man hardly ever asked about things outside of the contract and their game, more often focused on mundane matters and experiences. Questions about his nature and species came up even less. Moments like this one between them began with quiet evenings in the study when the young Earl first put his papers aside and contemplated some butterflies by the lantern with an unreadable expression. Ciel never explains his behaviour, continuing to behave as usual, as if nothing had happened. Of course, he hasn't shared his thoughts during his short breaks from work until now, and the only thing that could be seen was his eyes, which briefly lost the fire of human ignorance, gaining consciousness of something elevated. Sebastian wants to crack his skull open to see what he is thinking at that instant.
Turning his head to his master, Sebastian reminded him: "You already know that I had to learn plenty of things through human methods. What is it that is so surprising here?”
Ciel tapped his fingers on the marble, humming thoughtfully, and stepped down onto the soft carpet with his bare feet. He walked smoothly around the bed and pulled back the curtain with his hand, pausing above Sebastian's head, looking down into his ever-cunning eyes. The Earl stretched out his hand, running his middle finger from the man’s forehead, down the straight nose to the tip, descending to the soft pale lips, lingering on the lower one. White, straight teeth protruded from behind the lips, gently and playfully grasping the tip of the phalanx. Unimpressed, Ciel withdrew his finger and covered the other man's mouth with his palm, as if studying him.
"When you first appeared, you already had a set of knowledge sufficient to have a smart conversation with a modern person and conclude a contract. Are you saying you learned from other humans before this, even though summoning a demon is a rare event?" Ciel narrowed his eyes, removing his hand from the butler's face, and moving it to the smooth skin above the man's ribs.
"Mmm, I suppose you got me there," a big, velvet-skinned hand slid up the frail leg with its skin in goosebumps from the chilly air. It stroked the knee then and crawled under the bottom of the button-up, settling on the protruding pelvic bone. “Yes, a lot of things come to me intuitively from the environment, but not everything. I am, after all, just one hell of a butler, not God.” Ciel raised an eyebrow in response, obviously not content with the explanation, but amused enough not to be sarcastic.
Meanwhile, the arm went around his waist and pulled Ciel to the bed, forcing him to rest his sharp knee on the edge and then sit down next to the man. Their bare skin touched – thigh to ribs. The man's pale body is always surprisingly warm.
“That you will be selling to others, better tell me how science coexists with your essence," scepticism, although not a frequent visitor, sometimes found its way into the Earl’s head.
“Well, first of all, let me remind you that science is a game of pin the tail by scientists who accidentally stumble upon repeatable phenomena," after roaming around Ciel’s waist, the palm feathered up to his chest, feeling the pulse of his thundering heart beneath it. An electric shock ran through Sebastian’s fingertips full of want to impulsively claw at the muscle filled with hot blood. So fragile and so strong at the same time. After enjoying some validation of life, the hand brushed the nipple with the thumb on its way and settled on the boy’s shoulder blade. "People just aren't smart enough to explore this side of things, but that does not mean it is nonexistent," his eyes flashed dangerously scarlet and his sharpened teeth showed from beneath his lips.
In a flash, the other palm was on the frail shoulder, and the small body was thrown over the man's torso, lying on its back next to him. With a Cheshire smile and hungry eyes, Sebastian loomed over his master, with less than a centimetre between their faces.
“Or no one simply survived the encounter.”
The night is abnormally quiet tonight, too quiet for Ciel’s liking. Usually, it is on a night like this that British citizens go missing and add to the workload.
“You are overpaying it, Sebastian.”
The butler was not disappointed by his failed attempt to intimidate the young man, but instead, his face could be interpreted as relaxed and one can dare say content as he pressed his lips to the skin under Ciel’s chin.
"Adding to the first question," he continues the dialogue, replacing the wandering lips with a nose that poked into the boy’s neck and nuzzled behind the ear, caressing it, "imagine the Earth where you people live. That is quite a big place, is it not? And now let me remind you that the Sun is a hundred and ten times bigger," his teeth gently gripped the lobe of the small ear, pulling it back a little. A ragged breath came from the other side. Sebastian purred with satisfaction and continued: "There are up to one hundred and fifty million kilometres between them.”
“Our galaxy is a hundred thousand light-years across. It is six billion times bigger. And most likely, there are many galaxies like ours," the man licked the edge of the ear at last and withdrew, evaluating his work in the form of the Earl's now rosy and dishevelled face, who, despite his foggy eyes, most likely heard and understood every word.
“Are these scales big enough for you?”
It never ceases to amaze the butler - this level of self-control.
"Huh, not bad at all. I see someone found a way to lecture me, cheeky bastard," Ciel commented, albeit breathlessly, clearly, running his hands through onyx hair, drawing the skilled lips back to him. Sebastian answered with a meaningless "mn" and submitted to the wrapping hands, tracing kisses across the boy’s solar plexus and down to his flat stomach. His own palms wrapped around the small body at the sides, rising to count the ribs, then falling, pressing into the thin waist, sometimes brushing the hips. The very lazy and slow pace was evidently not going to develop into anything more, so, after rewarding his master with some more caresses, Sebastian looked up and asked:
“And yet, may I ask what exactly prompted the question on this particular topic?”
After lying still for a while, just breathing, Ciel looked up at the demon with his eyes now completely clear, and his disoriented face changed to a knowing, playful one.
"Nothing special. I was just in the mood to think about something like stars and everlasting questions. Do not mind me.”
Well, if the master asks, then he really has no choice but to not mind. He is, after all, one hell of an obedient butler.