Title: La Bon Moulin Rouge

Author: Laura Fones

E-Mail: rb46628@aol.com

Distribution: Red Windmill, the Penniless Poet, whoever else, simply ask.

Spoilers: Of course! You can't have a Moulin Rouge fiction without horrible, horrible, and shameless spoilers pertaining to the ending of the film.

Rating: PG-13

Content: Christian/China Doll, Toulouse

Feedback: Think of it as a much less costly way of paying your favorite authors with small tokens of ego.pretty please?

Summary: One must always depend on the kindness of strangers, for a man's salvation lies in an unfamiliar hand.

Disclaimer: I do not own and am not affiliated with any part of Baz Luhrmann's production, and I most definitely assure you, I am making no money from this.







Chapter 4

"Toulouse was never a man so strong of personality as in will to drink," Our conversation had gone on for hours on the small café's patio, and I could almost feel the growing resentment of the owner toward our presence. "But even with all of that, I still have some bit of love for him left."

"I miss him," Christian said, his soft manner toward the dwarf utterly apparent. "He was a good friend. I owe everything to him."

"He's a funny sort of man I guess, but a good friend." I paused and looked down, a good little man, and so mightily abused. I wished I were as sensitive to him as I was to Christian.

"He moved out a month after." He didn't even need to hint at the event, "I haven't seen him since."

"I remember."

"For a month he tried to cheer me up." Christian's voice was pained, "He tried so many things, and.and I guess he just got fed up with me. And then he left."

I leaned in and laid my hand across his shoulder (a move I would try to convince myself was not just an excuse to touch him). "He got fed up with me too, you know." I tried to share a smile of empathy but got lost in the feeling of his skin moving beneath the sleeve. It's a writer's curse that sensations become alarmingly keen at times, and cause them to falter. I wished at that moment I had never held a pen.

"How could he have?" Christian smiled at me in such a way that should he have been any other man, or had I been any weaker, I would have fallen into his arms and kissed him with such blind passion that every single nerve- ending in my body would become numb from the excess of sensation. But I was stronger than that, and I moved back into my chair, trying to appear composed.

After a reasonable amount of silence, I asked. "What do you think you'll do after you finish the book?"

"You think I'll finish it?" He sunk his head down upon his hands as he asked me.

"I know you will," I said, and asked again, "Where will you go?"

"Somewhere.probably a little nicer than this," He shrugged, "It's a wonder-- " He looked as if he were going to say something rather profound, but lapsed back, "What is it that keeps you here?"

"Nothing really." I raised an eyebrow, "I can be idle anywhere I want, but this place.I'll leave it one day."

"You said you couldn't leave it for all the world," He chided me like a child who had caught me in a lie.

"Feelings change."

Pressing his lips together for moisture's sake, he nodded, looking into my eyes. "They do, always." Then he smiled, and in that moment I could do nothing.



I hated that Toulouse's intuition always proved right, how he always knew me, and how it was him who made my emotions suspect in their infancy. He was again right, and I was again suspicious of myself; I could not rightly justify my feelings toward Christian anymore. The deceitful wretch of attraction, which which one day develops into love, had taken to servicing my thoughts. But I am a writer, that creature was never implanted but had always lived peacefully inside my skull, until that impish cur Toulouse awakened it and I began to dote on Christian; he who was as far out of reach as his lover from the grave. I betrayed Satine in the simple act of thinking.

Christian allowed me to watch him as he worked diligently at his raven typewriter, and every moment I did, the attraction would begin to woo me once more. Matters were worsened as he kept glancing to his side, appreciative of my company when he spied me. I could swear that my longing grew more acute as my breath flowed in and out of my lungs, quickening until I couldn't take it.

"I'm going out," I started with a gasp of air and stood, beginning on my way.

"Again?" He turned from his typewriter and slid it aside.

"Yes." Yes Christian, just let me go before I drive myself mad!

"Please don't," He held a pleading expression, "I can't bear doing it without you here."

"Understand, please." A combination of guilt and pining built in my breast, threatening with inhuman means to suffocate me. "I'll just be gone a moment." I halted and exhaled, returning his look, beseeching him to understand. "I'm not leaving Christian. I'm not sure if I could."

Looking down, he conceded. "All right."

Without even turning back to respond, I left the room, and once out the door, threw myself against the heavy wooden wall, remembering that they were nearly sound proof. Trembling breaths wracked my rib cage, and I begged it to hold its ground until I could get into the loft. Finally up the stairs, my shaking made into collapse and I sobbed against the wooden floor, a thousand curses of my humanity upon reddened lips. I pounded against the bare wood panels with tiny, useless fists and let my tears sink into the cloth of my garments, damning every god and goddess I knew of from mythology or personal belief. I fell eventually, without any strength left, and lay upon the floor like a small, forgotten rag doll. I turned so that my back would lie on the tear-stained floor, curling into a sort of ball and wishing myself to sleep.

My dreams were horrid and grotesque, the pain of sobbing leaving a mark even then. Christian sat upon the charred stage of the Moulin Rouge and stared into the blackened sky, his limbs hanging limply to his side. He looked at me and embraced me tightly, kissing me with the passion that my inner demons would have so desired. We lay down somewhere in the grass and everything was bright again, like it was in the beginning of that fateful summer. We began to make love and in ecstasy I turned over, just enough to see Satine's pseudonym upon her tombstone: The Sparkling Diamond.

We were making love upon her grave.

A gentle hand jerked me awake, and as I screamed for life and limb, Christian's face came into view. So vehemently relieved was I that I pulled him down beside me and hugged him so close to my we breathed in unison.

"Oh god Christian," I whispered as I began to rock, "What have we done?" I cried again, "What have I done?"

"Shh.it's alright." He calmed me and stroked my back, "We've done nothing." He shushed me again as I sniffled, "You've done nothing my little one." His body closed around me as he whispered into my ear. "My dear beautiful little one."

As I heard him utter the words, I broke our extreme closeness and held him at a finger's length, so close still that I only had to whisper. "Yours?" He nodded and my expression twitched in confusion, but my body took on a different mind. Without warning, I leaned in and kissed his lips softly. He didn't reject the motion, so I ventured further, and when that was not objected, I became ever more passionate. Suddenly the innocent embrace of pure relief had become a lustful encirclement that I could very well have charged for in the old days of prostitution. His arms clutched me tighter and my fingers walked up his spine with ardent gentleness. He took me up across his lap and held me firm against him, his actions somehow dominating mine.

But beneath my closed lids fluttered the morbid images from the dream. Satine's brilliant face smiled upon me and then rotted in front of my closed eyes.

Disgusted with myself, I cried and pulled away, "No!" I tore myself from Christian and stumbled down the stairs in panic.

"China Doll, wait!" He called after me and followed. As I fell he caught me and picked me up, trying to explain. Again I yanked myself from his grasp and ran down the rest of the steps and into his room, hastily finding my bag from long ago and filling it with all my possessions.

He caught me in the act and took the suitcase from me. "This is insane!" He went to caress the side of my face comfortingly and I batted him away.

"Please don't touch me." I pleaded, "I need to leave. Just look what I've done to you." I looked out the window and grief marred my tone, "Look what I've done to her!"

He held me at the shoulders with all his modest might, shaking me in a most insistent manner. "China Doll," His soft expression ordered my attention. "I can't let you leave. You're my only strength here." He looked up for a moment, summoning the poet he had long forgotten still lived, "The strength that commands my limbs to work and decrees that my heart continue beating.that instructs the rhythm of my breath and the persistence of my thought. Do you think I could have lived another day if you had not come?"

"You could have lived many more years without me," I said defiantly, trying to stare into his eyes without wistful desire.

"No," He stroked a strand of black hair back to its position behind my ear. "No, I couldn't."

Sighing, I looked down, as if considering. He held me against him once more, kissing my forehead, aiding my decision. Slowly I lifted my lips to his ear, and ever so gently, sang the cruel melody. "Come what may." I inhaled, "I will love you, until my dying day."

Christian gently removed me from the embrace and looked upon me in absolute disbelief, his eyebrows stirring with the unspoken words: how could you?

I closed my eyes, trying to fight my own urge to pull him tight against me. Then I spoke, hiding the tears with success. "You still live, Christian." Again he stared unbelieving. "Let me go."

I pulled my bag from his hands without any resistance, and I put my hand upon his cheek, and there I kissed him. "I love you." Tears made my voice weak and it trembled under the use. "But I'll make no promise." I kissed him again, and he collapsed onto the bedside, the motion enough to send me into silent weeping. "Good-bye."

I fled the moment his innocent eyes looked up at me again, for they still contained love.