Art
His knives are a work of art in their utility: so plain, so unassuming, and so deadly. And though I know he loves them more than me, I can't help but admire them. The way he moves with them, as if they are an extension of his own body - that too is art. He is fluidity and strength, beauty and cold steel. He dances with his knives, and they respond to his every command with adoring efficiency.
I'd like to touch those blades sometime, feel their cool under my fingertips, but I know you can't touch his knives without being cut.
I'd like to touch him as well, but he's forever out of reach, dancing. And all that is art as well.
To be untouchable as a knife blade. To be as uncompromising. That is his attraction. But sometimes, I think I love his knives more than I love him.
"Schuldig, give it to me."
"My my, Farfarello, don't say such tempting things!"
He laughs and his callousness is as beautiful as the knife in his hands.
"Oh let him have one, he'll never shut up if you don't and your collection upstairs should satisfy anyone." Nagi to the rescue, though he doesn't really take my side, only ever his own. If only Schuldig would bend this once, as molten metal bends, and let me have one.
He laughs again, "Chibi, when will you learn: I'm insatiable!"
Nagi scowls and turns back to his food. We're in the kitchen, Nagi sitting at the table eating and attempting to ignore us, Schuldig perched half-leaning, half-sitting on the kitchen counter, and I, a few paces in front of him, watching avidly as he handles one of his beautiful knives as if it were more valuable than a precious lover – and perhaps it is, to him.
"And I'm not letting you have it, Farf, or you'll start pinching all of them."
It's not fair. He doesn't use them in battle, preferring to protect them from knicks and scratches, taking a gun instead. But he practices with them every day, dancing, sliding, slicing and stabbing – it makes my heart ache to watch those knives go untainted with blood when they are so perfectly made for loosing it. It is his one flaw, that he doesn't use them to shed blood, being such a purist in his art that he loses sight of that side of the knives. But an imperfection such as that only enhances the rest of the image's perfection.
He senses the pang in my heart, for his eyes narrow and I feel his mind dip towards me, sliding into mine as smoothly as one of his knives would. There is pain but it is so intense that it transcends pain, and so, I feel it.
"Schuldig."
His mind withdraws sharply, and we look towards the doorway, where Crawford stands.
"What?"
"Don't give him the knife."
He bristles.
"I wasn't going to."
Crawford tilts his head and the light off his glasses makes it hard to tell what his eyes see, but I think he is looking at me.
"Is that so." It should be a question but the Oracle makes it sound so much more.
"Yes, it is." He sounds angered. "Why on earth would you think I'd give Farfarello one of my knives?"
Crawford shrugs, but he is smirking. "Just a precaution, he'd only get blood on it if you did."
And Schuldig turns back to me, face pensive.
"Blood…" he says, and I have to leave the room then, before he takes another dip – he rarely does, saying I have such a convoluted mind I must be mad and that it gives him headaches – but when he does, I can never hide a thing.
Distance and a few walls will not protect me, but at least my lust, for him and for the knife in his hands, abates when not in his presence.
Tomorrow we leave for Tokyo and a new job but tonight I am left in my cell trying to imitate him when he dances until I fall asleep.
Any old knife wouldn't do, because it wouldn't know his dance, wouldn't know his touch, wouldn't know his art. I despair of ever having a knife that I can dance with, and through it, dance with him.
I wake up, and the first things I see are shoes. His shoes. He is crouched a metre and a half away from me, watching me. In his hands is an object wrapped in rags. He takes a felt cloth and a small jar of oil from his pockets and places them in the space between us.
"You're an artist without materials to work with. Believe me when I say I know how frustrating that is. So here, and you'd better take good care of it or I'll take it back."
And he undoes the rags, and throws me his heart.
It is the most beautiful, the most amazing thing: so cool and sharp and singing for blood to pump and make it come alive.
The blade is cool in my hands, and softly warm where his fingers have touched it. It occurs to me that it is the first knife I ever saw him with. I touch the flat of the blade delicately to my tongue and it is almost perfection.
"And you'd better use it properly, I can't stand poor art, it just takes all the flavour out of it."
The flavour. I'm lunging forward and pushing him onto his back before he takes another breath. He yelps in surprise and dismay but doesn't struggle. The flavour. I hover over him, our lips almost touching, and then, placing the blade between us on his lips, I kiss it. He smiles behind the blade. His smile is as gentle as the knife is sharp. I press the knife very carefully against his mouth, raising a soft line of blood, staining it for the first time ever. He curses as I lick the blood from my knife. And I let him go.
He stumbles up, back to the door, frowning. But he is dancing even now, and so am I, dancing.
"Huh, last time I give you a knife, you bastard, and don't even think of cutting me again."
His hand is on the doorknob and as he turns to leave I think I can see it as the light from the hallway catches his face – yes, a smile and the swift dart of his tongue licking blood from his lips.
Everything he says and does, everything he touches, it's art.
I lick the blade until it's clean, and then start practising; every time I lick blood from this knife, he'll remember the first time I did so – and that also, as that hidden smile sparks behind his eyes as he watches, that also will be art.
End