zg_shadows | (no subject)

Maybe, on reflection, going clubbing had been a mistake. Actually, no, not clubbing; more that maybe this particular club had been a mistake.

It hadn’t started off too bad really. True, the area was a bit rundown, but a lots of clubs weren’t exactly in the bosom of well to do residentia. And the music was okay – a bit thumpy, but it was well arranged and the lights looked pretty as they spiralled and flickered through the dry ice, like the pillars of heaven.

But there was this guy… Daniel was, by now, pretty much used to people staring at him. Normally they looked for a while and whispered to each other, probably asking each other if that really was that poof that’s living with Max Shrier (and one day, Daniel vowed yet again, they would instead be asking “Isn’t that the famous artist, Daniel Fletcher, who’s completely famous in his own right as an incredibly talented artist and a genuinely nice person who just happens to be really rich but also a total philanthropist and humanitarian? Oh and didn’t he win the Turner prize three years running? And isn’t he happily married to that film star who we can also admire without diminishing our admiration for Daniel as a celebrity?”). Normally Daniel didn’t have much problem ignoring the stares and carrying on as normal.

This guy wasn’t normal.

Directly opposite where Daniel was standing under one of the few lights dotted around the club was a wall lined with booths, some dimly lit, some little more than deep pools of shadow. It was in one of these booths – in fact the one most directly counter to where Daniel stood – that the guy was sitting. He was sat at the centre of the booth, and around him were arranged various men and women in various poses of adoration and repose. He was popular too – people came and went, all of them exchanging words and gestures. Sometimes they were serious, sometimes flirtatious, but they all seemed to leave satisfied.

Details were hard to make out – the man was very far back in darkness, and Daniel couldn’t see much – but he was pretty certain that the guy was staring at him. What little glimpses Daniel could catch of the man’s features (very finely arranged features, a little part of his mind said before being firmly silenced) showed that his mouth (and what a mouth!) was fixed in a pleasant smile, but at the same time there was something intense about his shadowed expression, an almost predatory air to it. It was a unique combination of attraction and repulsion, and it made Daniel very uneasy.

Daniel shuddered slightly, and looked away. Glancing over each shoulder in turn, he was for once relieved to see the two slight and unassuming men that Max had set to protect him. They, too, were staring fixedly at the man in the booth, both of them with an odd kind of stillness that threatened to explode into motion at the slightest provocation. Definitely time to go.

As Daniel turned on his heel and hurried towards the exit, the man in the dark booth watched him go, a satisfied smile on his lips.