Title: Underneath It All

Challenge: Alcohol

Team: Weiss

Word Count: 100 (x8)

Characters/Pairings: Weiss and Schwartz

Rating: PG

Schuldig.

Schuldig drinks cheap beer. Crawford, observing him, thinks snidely that Schuldig has never developed good taste.

But that’s not quite right.

What Crawford doesn’t understand, doesn’t want to understand, is that Schuldig enjoys his cheap beer. He revells in feeling cheap and tawdry, in slang, late-night television, sex against an alley wall. There’s a visceral pleasure in being dirty and rough, something fundamental to what people are.

Schuldig believes that those who take their pleasure in wines, tailored suites and cultured voices are merely fooling themselves. So when Crawford walks by with his nose in the air, Schuldig merely smiles.

Aya.

Yohji, still flushed with the success of their mission, takes them out to eat and orders red wine. Aya looks at it.

Ran used to have wine at his parents’ parties. His mother would pour him a small jelly glass of the dark red liquid. Aya-chan, not yet old enough to be included in the ritual, would glare at him from across the table. He would smirk and raise his glass to her.

Aya ignores his glass and eats his domburi.

He thinks that when she wakes up, he and Aya-chan will share two small jelly glasses of red wine.

Nagi.

Nagi’s never tasted wine, beer, or any other sort of alcohol. He knows that he could, if he wanted to. Schuldig would happily help corrupt him, and Farfarello would watch silently, a little smile on his face. Crawford would know beforehand, looking at him with that little disapproving line between his eyebrows, and Nagi cringes at the thought.

But it’s not the thought of Crawford’s displeasure that stops him, not really. Alcohol makes people lose control, and as part of a team of assassins, he’s not sure whether he’s more afraid of being killed, or of killing one of them.

Yohji.

Yohji drinks whatever he can get away with, as often as he can get away with it. Alcohol is not quite as good as sex, but it lasts longer, and often enough the two go hand in hand.

That’s not the case tonight. He’s at a bar when he could be in bed with a gorgeous redhead, would have been, if said redhead had not seen him sneaking a look at a gorgeous brunette.

But he can’t see why the redhead would begrudge him a look, it’s not as if he’s not going to be in someone else’s bed tomorrow.

Omi.

Omi had champagne once at a party. It made him laugh loudly, and the bubbles made him lightheaded all evening. It was Yohji, of course, who had given it to him, but also Yohji who took it away when it was obvious that he’d had enough. He laughed at Omi’s drunken antics, and drove him home to sleep it off.

Mamoru drinks wine and mixed drinks, never enough to make him appear foolish, or to weaken his concentration, or to make him succeptible to unwise suggestions. After all, Mamoru doesn’t have a Yohji to tell him that he’s had enough.

Farfarello.

Farfarello is unsurprisingly succeptible to suggestion. He only drinks when someone else encourages him to do so. Usually it’s Schuldig.

Schuldig will suggest that they go out drinking, and take them to a bar where Schuldig will order beer, and Farfarello will order whiskey, although sometimes Schuldig can persuade him to drink beer.

Farfarello likes the smoky taste of whiskey against his palate, and he also likes to watch Schuldig slowly fall apart.

Alcohol doesn’t affect his system like it does Schuldig’s so he can drink until Schuldig is too drunk to supervise, and then play like he wants to.

Ken.

Ken is too wholesome and healthy to drink. When the others do so, he looks on disapprovingly, though he’s always willing to help deal with the aftermath.

What they don’t know, and what he’s been trying to forget for several years, is that there was a time when a drink after school was a normal occurance. He gave that up a long time ago, or what feels like a long time ago.

Except that every time Yohji comes stumbling in, smelling like a whorehouse and a distillery, Ken remembers it, and it’s as though he only gave it up yesterday.

Crawford.

Schuldig has only seen Crawford drunk once. He came into the apartment, clothes dissheveled, tie gone, stumbling over his own feet, stale breath smelling of vodka. Nagi took one frightened look and vanished. Schuldig was the one to support him, guiding him to the bedroom, though he really wanted to curl into a ball and pretend not to hear the confused thoughts in Crawford’s head. Crawford doesn’t get confused, and he doesn’t get drunk, doesn’t ever lose control.

Schuldig drops him on his bed, and Crawford gives one sharp, hysterical sob before subsiding.

Schuldig doesn’t ask him what he’s seen.