Author's Notes: I could've been napping, but you get this. If I fucked up the editing, shut up, I don't care. I'm tired, my feet hurt and I want to bite people. Beware the feral parrot! Arr…

Sleep of Sinners

I love to sin, to see sin, to know sinful things happen around me. The blinders of fanatics are not for me, I want to see it all, I want to be a part of it. True fanaticism is the obedience to follow one's calling. My calling is to show the world that God isn't all-powerful, that God isn't great and holy, but as monstrous as his fallen angels, as evil as Adam, as mad as Eve. Beautiful, yet cruel, my worship of the icy deity transcends all useless consequences, such as the inequitably named 'sanity'. What use have I for sanity? I laugh so much more when I slaughter.

I was sleeping just moments ago, my head resting against the cool leather of our overstuffed sofa and my ears filled to dripping like overweighed water pots with the shouting in the kitchen. Schuldig and Crawford are fighting again, a lullaby I enjoy now and then, noise that used to send Nagi fleeing under the bed in terror. He never liked yelling, too much of it as a child ruined him, or perhaps too little? I was always the one to bring him out again; I was always the one to soothe my little trembling brother-in-arms.

Now he would push me away in his own style of teenage rebellion, deny his fear of noise as he does his fear of thunder, though I still find him sleeping in his closet from time to time.

Now he is at school, an hour before dismissal and a half hour of train rides to get back. No after-school activities, no clubs, no friends, nothing. He won't even stop by the library anymore, not even when I meet him halfway and ask him to come with me. He always pretends he doesn't know me. I am not impervious, it hurts a little. At least I have noticed, Schuldig and Crawford wouldn't bother to ask, though it's not out of cruelty. They weren't trained with siblings as I once was.

They'll finish fighting before Nagi gets back and if they don't, I'll get up and silence them. Flashing a knife works well enough to distract them, to get their attention. They listen to me, sometimes they think I'm wise.

The sofa is a forest green, decidedly and disgustingly unnatural, scented with inhuman death I cannot savor and the mix of flavors from everyone else who sits here. I know their smell, each and every one;

Nagi, like technology. Like books and thousands of lost documents, like stolen money, which is sweeter than all the rest, like sugar in the process of caramelizing. Like damaged flesh resembling that of burn victims.

Schuldig, like lust. Like those creaky boots he wears to clubs, like textiles recently shipped and clinging to the salt-tang of the sea. Like the smog of Berlin and the dust of Dublin rubble and the slightest intoxication of Japanese drugs.

Crawford, like sweat that doesn't exist. Like the contradiction of fiery hail, like war and its battle-cries, like savageness. Like the feral dog, just barely contained behind prism glass, like the mucus and foam of snapping jowls.

The yelling has stopped, thankfully, and I start drifting back to sleep even as I hear Crawford leave in a huff and slam the door to his office. The noise is loud enough to annoy the neighbors, but they are at work, so it doesn't matter. Apparently, Schuldig won this fight, or else it would've been him who went to his room and slammed his door. Just as well, a mad German is an annoying German.

And that annoying German just shoved my legs off the other side of the couch and sat down in my warm spot. I try to muster the energy to open my eyes and glare at him, but I'm tired. I do open my eyes, though, and watch him pop open a beer and grimace at the flavor and hear him complain about 'damn Japanese alcohol'. He doesn't offer me a sip and I settle my legs over his lap so I can go back to sleep. He flips on the television and I watch the filmy people stalk about on the screen through my watery, exhausted eye.

I didn't get much sleep last night. We had a job, people to kill. It had been a rough one, at least for me. Crawford had withheld my medications against his better judgment and ended up having to sedate me fifteen minutes into it. I hate getting sedated; probably more than the hallucinations it brings on when I wake up. I came to in the back of the car, neatly tied in my straight jacket, seeing everything as if I was on acid. Acid isn't a pleasant experience after a murder, even for Schuldig (who enjoys the terror some drugs bring on). I was thirsty and cold and dirty and I think more than once I asked if we could go home.

We didn't, not for another hour of driving to cover our tracks. After that, they locked me in my cell for the rest of the morning. I was let out after lunch and decided to lie down and try to sleep off the hangover of medications. There is still a distinctive echo and strangeness in the normal household noises and the slosh of liquid in Schuldig's beer container and the groan of leather under his butt seems magnified somehow. I feel like I'm on a boat…I am starting to feel seasick.

Schuldig is absently stroking my leg, watching television and occasionally sipping from his can. He didn't acknowledge me or talk to me, just sits and silently watches the show. I don't know if it is the news or a drama or if the language is English or Japanese. I'm not much bothered by that. I am finally starting to go back to sleep.

Perhaps he understood how miserable I am feeling, hearing some reverberation of mental thoughts from my head. Maybe that's why he's being so quiet. I doubt the reasoning is that simple, but one can hope. I shut my eye and settle my head back into the hollow it made in the arm of the sofa, more than ready to go back to sleep. Just before I begin to doze, Schuldig is shifting around on the sofa and I feel an ominous 'something' hovering over me. I open my eye again and glower up at Schuldig, whose face is far too close to mine for comfort.

"What?" I growl, barring my teeth in mimicry of the German's smirk to show my discomfort. I can feel his breath across my face, like a soft caress, stained with beer and cigarettes.

"Close your eyes again," he breathes. The scent of alcohol makes my head swim uncomfortably. I feel the urge to correct him, but I say nothing. I do not close my eye.

He reaches up and starts to lift my eye patch from my face. I panic. You don't just pull off a man's eye patch, it's rude. I nearly throw Schuldig off of me, toss him into the coffee table. I would have if I wasn't still high on drugs. He easily holds me down until I stop thrashing. He's cooing at me, comforting words in German. How can German sound like that? The language is practically violent when spoken, yet he makes it sound like a choir.

I am focused on his lips, pink and thin and wide with a smile that never reaches his hollow cat-eyes. His teeth are white, almost perfect but for a slight overlap of his two front teeth and the barely-there nicotine stains that match the darkened pigment of his index and middle right hand fingers. I can feel myself going cross-eyed, he's getting closer and my heart is thumping in my chest, so loud I'm sure Brad can hear it in the other room. It's thundering in my ears like a gong, echoing through the unnatural haze I lay in.

Boom, boom boom…

Seconds tick by too swiftly and his mouth meets mine, closed lips against my cursing ones. I struggle again, my stomach crawling up into my throat so quickly I think I'm going to vomit right there. Schuldig seems to sense the danger and pulls away suddenly, licking his lips.

"Bloody hell!"

I shove him off of me, land a blow to his face and stalk away, fuming. It would be more effective to my furious posing if I didn't wobble when I walk, but I didn't have much of a choice. I slam the door to my room and flip my locks securely.

I know he's out there, smirking as widely as ever, a red and purple bruise flowering over his attractive face like a tulip.

I should've ripped his tongue off.

Fin Sleep of Sinners

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FYI: This is a sequel to Cello Prose that I wrote because of the one review I got asking me to continue the one-shot. This is a one-shot too. There isn't going to be any more chapters to this, so don't ask. Also, in this fic and in Cello Prose, there isn't going to be any Yaoi or Shonen-ai, as Farfarello's reaction so eloquently proves. If there was going to be Yaoi or Shonen-ai, I would've announced it. Don't like it? Suck it up, ya sissies.