Disclaimer: If I owned it, it would be a MUCH different show. Heh heh heh.
A/N: Never seen the show. Doesn't mean I can't be obsessive about it. And about Farfie. I 3 Farfie. And Schwarz in general. -smirk-
It was that incessant thrumming of the hearts and minds around him that really got Schuldig dancing. It wasn't the syncopated music nor the asinine lyrics. It wasn't the flashing lights or the crush of bodies. It wasn't the abundance of drugs or the overflowing alcohol. It was being in tune with the minds of those around him that got his heart racing. There wasn't a drug or liquor in the world that could give him the same feeling as that. He got drunk off of thoughts and high off of emotions. He nearly devoured the minds of those around him, just so he could get more. It wasn't enough. It was never enough.
Tonight was his first trip to Dark. Well, that wasn't fair. It was everyone's first trip to Dark, considering the fact that tonight was the club's opening night. The majority of the crowd was on the guest list; the best of the best from the other local clubs. Only the beautiful or the rich (or the beautiful AND rich) were allowed in tonight if they weren't on the list already. Schuldig was beautiful, there was no doubt about it, but it was still easier to just give the bouncer a mental nudge to look the other way and then slip in when his head was turned.
The club wasn't much different from most places he went to. The music varied, though, and for that he was thankful. It wasn't the same techno drabble over and over again that seemed to haunt his favorite night spots. There was rock thrown into the mix, some remixed jazz, even a few low, sultry, slower tunes. He enjoyed those the most. He always loved the way the music just seemed to flow through him and to every limb. Even his toes danced when he was really into the moment. And when he was, the thoughts of those nearest him were tuned into him. A lot of them did so without him even having to give a customary nudge. And, if there was one thing Schuldig wasn't, it was modest. He loved having those eyes on him.
This particular evening had him dressed to the nines. His top clung to him, almost desperate in the way it held on to him. Black, naturally, and solid, though the long sleeves were mesh. The leather he wore below the waist hugged each curve, every nuance of his legs, leaving nothing to the imagination and showing off an ass that just SCREAMED to be touch. Despite what his clothing said, though, his demeanor gave off a very distinct air of 'you can touch me when I tell you that you can,' and so he was left blissfully alone, even through being surrounded. After all, you look with your eyes, not with your hands.
There was one more feature of the club that Schuldig had a particular fondness for. The caged dancers that worked just feet above the crowd nearly had him hypnotized. Men, women, exotic, plain, they were all there, and they were all masters of their craft. The red haired German made his way over to the bar and ordered a drink, hauling himself up onto the stool. When it came, he whirled around in the chair to admire the dancers above his head. He put up a minor mental block to keep people from bothering him while he scanned those in the cages, dancing as if their very lives were on the line. Which, for all intensive purposes, they could very well have been. You never knew around here. Times were tough. Deals were made. He could only half imagine what one like this could have been. Dance or die.
His eyes were flicking from dancer to dancer, paying particular attention to those of his own preferred gender, when they stopped on one cage near the center of the floor. Any other time, Schuldig may have given the man in the cage a passing glance or two, but something else altogether made him come to a halt. There was a silence emanating from that man. A silence so sudden and so full that Schuldig wondered how he hadn't noticed it earlier. He'd never found silence before. Not without being so high and drunk off his ass that even his own thoughts were unknown to him. His entire world had upended upon this one discovery. It was like the light at the end of the tunnel, the pot at the end of the rainbow, a glass of water to a man who'd been in the desert for too long. Schuldig had been looking for this person, this one being who could make that veil fall. Unfortunately, when he turned his attention away from the dancers, the voices came back louder than before until he was able to tune them down as usual.
When he turned back to the dancer, he could finally hear thoughts. Small, quiet musings, but they were there. So, maybe the silence wasn't as complete as he had hoped. But at the very least, this man seemed to be able to quell his thought processes enough that Schuldig had to actually look for what he was thinking. The only thoughts he were gathering now from him were dance, dance, dance and nothing else. And people said he had a one track mind. Hmph.
Now that he'd been reassured that he hadn't gone temporarily insane, Schuldig settled in to watch this dancer. He was certainly one of the more exotic ones the cages held. He studied him slowly, from toe to top. Heeled boots clad his feet, hugging his legs and ending halfway up his calf. Where the black of the boots ended, white skin began. It glistened slightly in the lighting of the club, and Schuldig watched the muscles twist a moment, a low grin playing across his face. Continuing on his path of observation, he almost started laughing out loud at the hot pants, before realizing they clung to the dancer's body very nicely. He had to pause a moment to wonder if that was au natural or of the dancer, ahem, stuffed. Dastardly practice, that. A mesh tank top, that may as well not have been there for all the good it did, covered his wiry frame, and even in the dim lighting, Schuldig could see a few faint outlines of scars. He could feel the potential for some real power behind those thinly veiled muscles in his arms and torso, too. Finally, his eyes came around to the face, and he let out a breath he hadn't realized he'd been holding.
He'd never seen a face quite like it. Scars, numerous and deep, shone against the pale skin, their depths heightened by the dancing lights overhead. There was an eye patch over the left eye, and Schuldig desperately wanted to see what was underneath it. The eye that remained uncovered was closed, the face lifted in ecstasy as the man continued to dance. White-blonde hair was cropped short to his head, and Schuldig wondered if it was as soft as it looked. The face lowered for a moment and the eye came open, and the amethyst that greeted the German's vision wasn't what he had expected. Not one bit. But, still, that color just seemed to…work.
And the overall package was very much to Schuldig's liking. The scars intrigued him, to be sure, as did the eye patch. The man also had all the grace of a dancer. It almost looked like a cat inhabited his body and possessed his limbs, with motions that fluid. Water held together by skin. He twisted and contorted himself into all sorts of interesting positions that made Schuldig smirk and think all sorts of lovely thoughts. The man seemed to be enthralled with his work, and if his constant thought stream of dance, dance, dance was any indication, he was. Finally, Schuldig dropped his hiss, stay away from me mental guards and turned around to chat with the bartender about his dancer.
He waved the young girl over and smiled faintly, still nursing his drink. He leaned against the bar, propping his head on a hand, and smirked. "Who's that dancer in the middle cage?" He turned around a moment and pointed at the white haired man briefly before reverting his attention to her.
She was grinning at him, alternating between fixing drinks and washing glasses. "Our first night, and already he's our most popular dancer." She snickered quietly and filled a few more orders, eyes flickering over Schuldig's shoulder and to the cage. "Well, we all know him as Farfarello. Which makes sense for a place like this. It's a name taken from Dante's Inferno, y'know? One of the demons. Anyway, that's just what we know him as. He has a real name, but only our boss knows it." Well, she certainly sounded like she'd given this speech a few times tonight.
Schuldig nodded slowly, swishing his drink about in his mouth as he took that in. One of Dante's demons, hmm? "What happened to his eye?"
At this, she finally paused a moment and looked up, shrugging helplessly. "Don't know. Some of the other dancers think that he still has it, and the patch is just a part of his 'look.' I don't believe that, myself. You've seen the scars on him, right? It wouldn't surprise me if he doesn't have an eye under there. Anything else?"
Schuldig nodded again, placing his empty glass on the counter where the bartender quickly picked it up, dumping it away to be cleaned. Her little comment just made him more determined than before to find out what laid behind that patch. "Yeah. What time's his break?" He rather figured the boy would be dancing all night, but that didn't mean he didn't get to be off for any amount of time. In fact, the boss would be fired if he didn't allow his workers breaks.
"That's the weird part. He refuses to take any breaks. His cage has been raised twice already, and both times it came back down, he was still in it. It's like he doesn't even care that his body's getting tired." The tender shrugged and moved away once more to fill some more orders. Schuldig sighed softly and whirled around in his seat to watch once more. He'd rather been looking forward to possibly chatting this Farfarello up a bit, but that obviously wasn't going to be possible. He'd just have to wait until the club closed to get his opportunity.
The last tendril of thought he gathered from Farfarello before heading out onto the floor once again was dance, dance, dance.