Title: The Greatest Thing
Author: Jen Faulkner (jfaulkne@eden.rutgers.edu)
Pairing: Toulouse/Christian
Category: romance, angst
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: Sadness. No smut, I'm afraid. M/M (non-explicit) slash.
Homoerotic content.
Spoilers: For the whole movie, yes.
Feedback: Please!
Archive: Sure, just let me know.
Disclaimer: All things MR belong to Baz Luhrmann and Fox. You may
recognize bits from lots of songs used in the movie. The
song "Nature Boy," quoted at the beginning, was written by
Eden Ahbez.
Summary: After the events of Moulin Rouge, Toulouse reflects back on
his unrequited love for Christian.
Notes: I need to go see MR a third time. But it was obvious to me
from the first viewing that Toulouse loved Christian.
Unrequitedly, since I have a hard time imagining Christian with
anyone but Satine, for at least a while after her death.
For Glim, for so many reasons and always.
*****
"The Greatest Thing"
by Jen Faulkner
There was a boy, a very strange, enchanted boy.
They say he wandered very far, very far,
Over land and sea.
A little shy and sad of eye
But very wise was he.
And then one day,
One magic day, he passed my way.
While we spoke of many things,
Fools and kings,
This he said to me:
"The greatest thing you'll ever learn
is just to love and be loved in return."
He came into my life through a gaping hole. The Argentinian fell
through the floorboards, but I, I fell in love.
I had not expected that, no. Who expects such beauty to be merely a
floor below them? It was not just his face as perfect as any I'd ever
painted, but his soul -- his soul -- that sparkled like a diamond in
the dirt.
He believed in love, you see.
Oh, we all said that we believed, that we upheld the ideals of truth,
beauty, freedom, and love, but what did we know of them? Before him,
we thought of those four as the passport to a dark, licentious
playground. They meant to us the world of the brothels, the killing
fury of absinthe. What did we know?
He knew. He knew that he had never been in love before her. Many
times I had believed myself in love, with whatever pretty face passed
me by. I had died of love a thousand times.
A thousand times I had picked up a pretty poet languishing in the
gutter, some even with talent, yes. I promoted them, pushed them off
on others, dropped them as soon as I was bored of them. I like to
think I helped some of them.
He, despite what Satine thought, was never one of them. More than
pretty -- beautiful; more than talented -- inspired. And the gutters
of Montmartre never touched him. No more would the dirt have clung to
an angel.
He believed in love, you see.
Love lifted him up to the heavens, where he belonged. Even if he had
no object for all that love before Satine, love always surrounded and
poured through him, like air, like oxygen.
How could one not love him?
I loved him like I had loved no one else. How wonderful life was now
he was in the world! My beautiful, shining boy. I would have been
glad to die for love of him, but since I didn't have that choice, I
did what I could. I brought him back together with Satine, whom he
loved, and who loved him. I didn't know she was dying.
I told him that she loved him, when he had come to doubt it. His
heart was breaking to think that she had never loved him, and I too
was in torment seeing him with all his passion gone, drained, washed
away by the cold rain.
I almost told him then, alone in his room, how I loved him. I wanted
to be the one who could soothe his pain. But no, I was not the one he
loved.
So I said instead, "She loves you," and all the time meant, "*I* love
you."
I told him how much I longed for love, and I wished he could see that
it was his love that I desired more than words could express. I could
not put my love into words. But from him I had come to understand
truly what art, what love, could mean.
He yelled at me to leave him there alone, and I did. Hurting like
that, I left him, since I was not the one who could heal him. Such
grand ideas I had had, that I would confess my love, and we would fly
away. It would be as if my life would finally begin again, with him
by my side, and I would leave all the ugliness that had been consuming
me behind, reborn in his beauty.
But the truth was that he did not love me as I loved him. He liked
me, certainly, but his passion was for her, never for me, an ugly
dwarf who lived an ugly life surrounded by the squalor of his friends,
the pimps and girls from the brothels. My life had long drowned any
chance at a freedom from vice in a tidal wave of absinthe.
How could I even think to offer up my love, twisted and black compared
to his purity?
So I told him, "She loves you," and never, "*I* love you."
To leave him there alone, broken, it hurt me as nothing else could. I
could offer him no comfort, not even one embrace. Feeling a thousand
times a fool, I left him.
Satie had cursed me for a fool for loving someone who did not love me,
Audrey had called me worse than a fool -- but what else was I to do?
Every moment watching him with Satine -- and we were always watching
-- was agony, but also the most beautiful thing I had ever seen.
*That* was love, two spirits dancing in the starlight.
The Argentinian even tried to convince him to stay away from Satine,
for my sake. Wasted effort, I could have told him. Only death would
part them.
And then her death did part them. I had been so terrified, hysterical
to think that the Duke's man might kill my beloved, so afraid for his
life, when all the time it was she who was near death. But at least
she died reunited with him. He would never have forgiven himself had
she died alone.
It is thanks to me, yes, that he put aside his jealousy and anger and
believed one last time in love. His own words, shouted out with all
my strength.
Un cri du coeur: "The greatest thing you'll ever learn is just to
love, and be loved in return."
I almost could not remember those words, both wanting and not wanting
him to walk away from her. But I wanted to see him happy.
Happy? With Satine dead? But I did not know. Even had I known, I
could have done nothing else. One must still love, even if only death
awaits you at the end.
"The greatest thing you'll ever learn is just to love, and be loved in
return."
Oh, Christian. You were loved more than you ever knew.
Would that you had loved me in return.
**********
Fin.
Feedback greatly (and gratefully!) appreciated.
Author: Jen Faulkner (jfaulkne@eden.rutgers.edu)
Pairing: Toulouse/Christian
Category: romance, angst
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: Sadness. No smut, I'm afraid. M/M (non-explicit) slash.
Homoerotic content.
Spoilers: For the whole movie, yes.
Feedback: Please!
Archive: Sure, just let me know.
Disclaimer: All things MR belong to Baz Luhrmann and Fox. You may
recognize bits from lots of songs used in the movie. The
song "Nature Boy," quoted at the beginning, was written by
Eden Ahbez.
Summary: After the events of Moulin Rouge, Toulouse reflects back on
his unrequited love for Christian.
Notes: I need to go see MR a third time. But it was obvious to me
from the first viewing that Toulouse loved Christian.
Unrequitedly, since I have a hard time imagining Christian with
anyone but Satine, for at least a while after her death.
For Glim, for so many reasons and always.
*****
"The Greatest Thing"
by Jen Faulkner
There was a boy, a very strange, enchanted boy.
They say he wandered very far, very far,
Over land and sea.
A little shy and sad of eye
But very wise was he.
And then one day,
One magic day, he passed my way.
While we spoke of many things,
Fools and kings,
This he said to me:
"The greatest thing you'll ever learn
is just to love and be loved in return."
He came into my life through a gaping hole. The Argentinian fell
through the floorboards, but I, I fell in love.
I had not expected that, no. Who expects such beauty to be merely a
floor below them? It was not just his face as perfect as any I'd ever
painted, but his soul -- his soul -- that sparkled like a diamond in
the dirt.
He believed in love, you see.
Oh, we all said that we believed, that we upheld the ideals of truth,
beauty, freedom, and love, but what did we know of them? Before him,
we thought of those four as the passport to a dark, licentious
playground. They meant to us the world of the brothels, the killing
fury of absinthe. What did we know?
He knew. He knew that he had never been in love before her. Many
times I had believed myself in love, with whatever pretty face passed
me by. I had died of love a thousand times.
A thousand times I had picked up a pretty poet languishing in the
gutter, some even with talent, yes. I promoted them, pushed them off
on others, dropped them as soon as I was bored of them. I like to
think I helped some of them.
He, despite what Satine thought, was never one of them. More than
pretty -- beautiful; more than talented -- inspired. And the gutters
of Montmartre never touched him. No more would the dirt have clung to
an angel.
He believed in love, you see.
Love lifted him up to the heavens, where he belonged. Even if he had
no object for all that love before Satine, love always surrounded and
poured through him, like air, like oxygen.
How could one not love him?
I loved him like I had loved no one else. How wonderful life was now
he was in the world! My beautiful, shining boy. I would have been
glad to die for love of him, but since I didn't have that choice, I
did what I could. I brought him back together with Satine, whom he
loved, and who loved him. I didn't know she was dying.
I told him that she loved him, when he had come to doubt it. His
heart was breaking to think that she had never loved him, and I too
was in torment seeing him with all his passion gone, drained, washed
away by the cold rain.
I almost told him then, alone in his room, how I loved him. I wanted
to be the one who could soothe his pain. But no, I was not the one he
loved.
So I said instead, "She loves you," and all the time meant, "*I* love
you."
I told him how much I longed for love, and I wished he could see that
it was his love that I desired more than words could express. I could
not put my love into words. But from him I had come to understand
truly what art, what love, could mean.
He yelled at me to leave him there alone, and I did. Hurting like
that, I left him, since I was not the one who could heal him. Such
grand ideas I had had, that I would confess my love, and we would fly
away. It would be as if my life would finally begin again, with him
by my side, and I would leave all the ugliness that had been consuming
me behind, reborn in his beauty.
But the truth was that he did not love me as I loved him. He liked
me, certainly, but his passion was for her, never for me, an ugly
dwarf who lived an ugly life surrounded by the squalor of his friends,
the pimps and girls from the brothels. My life had long drowned any
chance at a freedom from vice in a tidal wave of absinthe.
How could I even think to offer up my love, twisted and black compared
to his purity?
So I told him, "She loves you," and never, "*I* love you."
To leave him there alone, broken, it hurt me as nothing else could. I
could offer him no comfort, not even one embrace. Feeling a thousand
times a fool, I left him.
Satie had cursed me for a fool for loving someone who did not love me,
Audrey had called me worse than a fool -- but what else was I to do?
Every moment watching him with Satine -- and we were always watching
-- was agony, but also the most beautiful thing I had ever seen.
*That* was love, two spirits dancing in the starlight.
The Argentinian even tried to convince him to stay away from Satine,
for my sake. Wasted effort, I could have told him. Only death would
part them.
And then her death did part them. I had been so terrified, hysterical
to think that the Duke's man might kill my beloved, so afraid for his
life, when all the time it was she who was near death. But at least
she died reunited with him. He would never have forgiven himself had
she died alone.
It is thanks to me, yes, that he put aside his jealousy and anger and
believed one last time in love. His own words, shouted out with all
my strength.
Un cri du coeur: "The greatest thing you'll ever learn is just to
love, and be loved in return."
I almost could not remember those words, both wanting and not wanting
him to walk away from her. But I wanted to see him happy.
Happy? With Satine dead? But I did not know. Even had I known, I
could have done nothing else. One must still love, even if only death
awaits you at the end.
"The greatest thing you'll ever learn is just to love, and be loved in
return."
Oh, Christian. You were loved more than you ever knew.
Would that you had loved me in return.
**********
Fin.
Feedback greatly (and gratefully!) appreciated.
