My muse would like to thank Yvi, Serene, BeetleBon, Craklyn, Katie, and Finding Beauty :) Special thanks to Star for reading these and telling me whether I'm insane or not before I post :):):)

Wesley: "Enter the villain."

--Ingrid's Funeral, Act 1, Scene 2

Satine believed wholeheartedly in Fate and Destiny and Love, with capital letters and heart-dotted 'i's. She hadn't had many opportunities in life to seek out such things, but hard times were no stranger to Satine and it was only dreams of those beautiful words which had sustained her. She also trusted in the certainty that she was meant for great things--Fate, Destiny, and Love in some perfectly concocted combination. Never before had she ever come close to thinking she'd found them all at once.

Maybe...tonight she had.

The evening had started out spectacularly badly, of course--as soon as she'd stepped inside the club some creep had started making scary advances, until she'd quietly notified security. He'd disappeared for a while, and in his place had come Christian... Satine had wondered briefly why his voice sounded so musical and luscious in her head, so she'd quickly downed a Cosmo to get rid of the floaty feeling that was encroaching on her carefully ordered senses. It hadn't gone away, though... Christian had simply gotten handsomer, sexier, sweeter, though he was not exactly incredibly witty. She loved his eyes, she loved his hair, she loved how her name sounded as it flowed out of his mouth. She wanted him to kiss her with those delectable lips and she wanted more than anything to hear the words "I love you" coming from them.

Lord, what was happening to her?

Of course it hadn't lasted. That creep had shown up again and forced her quick exit. Satine wasn't sure why she was so scared of the man. She'd never seen him before, and hopefully he didn't know her, either. Something about the look in those eyes was so sharp, so far claimed by the dark side that they made her feel that her soul had been ravaged with one repulsive look.

Christian had gone back inside to get her coat, and had been gone far too long. The moment he'd left her sight the chill of the night air had reached her bones, and with each foggy breath Satine's anxiety grew. The alley was awfully dark, and--

Satine's nerves ground to an agonizing halt as she felt an icy cold hand touch her bare back. She leapt away, her fear only escalating as she caught sight of the hand's owner. The name "Christian!" tore from her mouth with a thought. Christian would save her, Christian would...

The man's greasy hair hung in those terrible eyes, and he swayed a bit as he took a step toward her. Satine realized quite quickly that she only had to keep out of the man's reach to be safe from him--he was so drunk he could barely walk, let alone run. Bu something in his eyes spoke so many volumes of evil, something so purely wicked that it seemed to represent everything that was wrong with the world...

"Bonjour," slurred the man, and even though his voice was muddled by drink and drug, it suddenly became as crisp in Satine's memory as the day she'd first heard it...

Oh, God. No...

It was him. Him, him, him, who had torn her world apart...

"Christian!" she screamed again, and as if on cue he came flying out of the nightclub clutching her coat. He ran into the drunk head-on, sending them both to the ground.

"Oh, I'm sorry," Christian mumbled, struggling to his feet. He spotted Satine a few feet away and she flew into his arms, shaking. "What was wrong?" he asked. "Was someone there? Where'd he go? What happened?"

Satine looked to the man on the ground, who was out for the count as effectively as if Christian had landed a punch. All Satine wanted to do was get out of there, but somehow everything had been made all right again by the feel of Christian's arms around her. "Let's just go," she whispered. "Can we just go?"

He extracted himself from her grasp, placing the jacket around her shoulders. "Was that the guy who was harassing you? Want me to kick him?"

"No, don't worry about him. He's out."

Christian took Satine's hand, pulling her away from the crumpled man on the ground and the noise of the nightclub. "Come on. There's a little café a couple blocks from here, you can sit down and I'll buy you a muffin."

Satine nearly giggled at his matter-of-factness, the link of their hands beginning to banish the darkness of memories. A muffin? The comment had come seemingly out of left field, and yet somehow it made her feel so fuzzily wonderful, where moments before there had only been terror. "Blueberry?" she asked, and was disgusted with the tears she could still hear in her voice.

He kissed her forehead, a simple gesture seeming strangely familiar. "Absolutely. I might even spring for a scone."

"With powdered sugar?" she inquired. "And maybe some fancy swirly frosting on top?"

"Anything," he said. "Anything you want."

His words sent pleasant little shivers down her spine, and Satine wondered not for the first time if she were the only one feeling these things. This definitely qualified as the most bizarre night of her life, that was for sure. The café was just down the street as Christian had promised, a cute little well-lit muffin shop in the middle of a row of darkened department stores.

"A blueberry scone with powdered sugar and frosting for the lady," said Christian, earning him a strange look from the young girl behind the counter. He seemed so free, thought Satine, so completely unaware of other's judgments. He was just...himself. That, or he was quite a good actor.

"We got almond, and we got raspberry," said the girl. "There's a little jar of powdered sugar over by the napkins."

"We'll take one of each," declared Christian. "We spare no expense when it comes to scones."

After paying and earning a few more weird looks from the cashier girl, they sat at a little window table with the scones and powdered sugar between them. "Are you feeling okay?" said Christian, dusting the pastries with a snowstorm of sugar. "Are you sure that guy didn't hurt you?"

Unwelcome images flickered across Satine's mind, but she pushed them aside and concentrated on Christian's face. "I'm fine. Let's talk about something else. I've never seen you at the club before, do you go often?"

"Oh, not really. I just like to people-watch." Christian bit into the almond scone and made a face. "Eech."

"You don't like cosmopolitans and you don't like almond scones. What am I going to do with you?"

"So sue me, vodka doesn't agree with me. Perhaps it just needs more powdered sugar."

"The vodka or the scone?"

"Both, probably. Who came up with the word 'scone,' anyway?"

"It's Scottish," replied Satine immediately. "From the triangular 'Stone of Destiny,' the place where Scottish kings used to be crowned."

Christian looked vaguely awed. "I see."

Satine felt herself blushing for the thousandth time that night. "I was a linguistics major in college."

"Where'd you go?"

"Well, I didn't exactly...graduate. I was also a theatre major, a psychology major, and a forestry major. You can see why I'm waitressing for a living."

"I can see why you're amazing."

Satine's cheeks were by now crimson. "I take back what I said before, you know. You are good at this."

Christian blushed a bit too, but didn't have a chance to reply as he was too distracted by the strains of music coming over the radio. "Wonderful..." crooned the chorus members. "Wonderful..."

"I love this song!" Satine and Christian said in unison, causing her to blush even more.

Christian leapt up and climbed on top of his chair, beginning to sing. "All you have to do is touch my hand to show me you understand, and something happens to me that's some kind of wonderful..."

"Christian, get down!" cried Satine, but she was too busy laughing to really care if he heeded her words.

"At any time my little world seems blue," he continued, "I just have to look at you, and everything seems to be some kind of wonderful. I know I can't express this feeling of tenderness, there's so much I wanna say, but the right words just don't come my way." He placed one foot on the shaky table, then the other, stretching out his arms like he was welcoming the sun. "I just know when I'm in your embrace this world is a happy place, and something happens to me, there's some kind of wonderful!" Christian tapped his feet on the table in time to the music, nearly knocking the scones to the floor.

"I know I can't express this feeling of tenderness," sang Satine, surprising herself with how easily the words came. She wasn't even embarrassed. "There's so much I wanna say but the right words just don't come my way."

"I just know when I'm in your embrace," they sang together, "this world is a happy place, and something happens to me, there's some kind of wonderful..."

Christian crouched on the table, bringing him back to eye level with Satine. "Some kind of sweet lips," he sang softly, "some kind of warm eyes, some kind of soft sigh, there's only some kind of wonderful. Oh yeah, wonderful..."

They leaned toward each other as the song faded, and...

Someone cleared their throat next to the table. "Uh, sorry to interrupt," said the cashier girl, grimacing. "We're closing now. And could you please get off the table, sir?"

Satine was beginning to think the entire night had been a dream, a bizarre quasi-nightmare that had morphed into the most wonderful, fun, romantic date she'd ever had. She threw her keys on the hall table before continuing to the kitchen, still humming The Drifters under her breath. She was almost wistfully certain that she'd never see him again, that he'd only been a figment of the imagination. He hadn't kissed her, granted, but he'd certainly wanted to. He'd been quite the gentleman the whole time, putting her in a cab and promising to come and see her tomorrow at the Two Windmills. It was all way too perfect.

The click, clack, click of a typewriter's keys from the apartment next door permeated her fantasy. Lord, why didn't that man buy a computer? These walls were paper-thin. She'd never met her neighbor, but she imagined he was probably a writer. Sour and middle-aged and only mildly successful, she pictured that his only consolation was annoying his neighbors with the constant click-clack of putting thoughts to paper. Satine pounded on the wall, which stopped the clicking momentarily, but her neighbor simply pounded back and went on click-clacking. Fine. That was how he wanted it, then? Their constant battle was nothing new, and she knew exactly what would annoy him most. Satine flipped on the radio, turning the volume up. Tom Petty was singing, and Satine belted out the words along with him. "All the vampires walkin' through the valley, move west down Ventura Boulevard! And all the bad boys are standing in the shadows, all the good girls are home with broken hearts!"

The click-clack had faded, but after a moment resumed, so Satine continued as well, yelling the words as loud as she could. "And I'm free, free fallin'!!! Yeah I'm free, free fallin'!!!..."

Satine could no longer hear the typewriter, so she turned the volume down a bit to make sure. He appeared to have stopped completely. Ha! Score: Satine one, Neighbor zero. Satine allowed herself a victory verse as she danced around the living room. "I wanna glide down over Mulholland, I wanna write her name in the sky, gonna free fall out into nothin', gonna leave this world for a while...."

"Satine?"

She stopped cold in the middle of a pirouette, nearly tumbling to the ground. Had she just heard her name? Nah, it had to have been her imagination.

"Satine, is that you?"

She'd definitely heard her name this time. She turned off the radio and listened intently. What the hell was going on? It was coming from her neighbor's apartment. And then...he began to sing something quite familiar. "All you have to do is touch my hand to show me you understand..."

Satine's stomach did a flip-flop and she nearly toppled to the ground again. She sang in a shaky voice. "And something happens to me that's some kind of wonderful... Christian?"

"Satine!" the detached voice cried, and she could hear footsteps pounding in the direction of her neighbor's door. She hurried to her door, too, flung it open, and...

There was Christian. "Hey, neighbor," he said after a moment. "Sorry about the noise. I didn't realize..."

"Me neither!" said Satine quickly. "I'm sorry I'm so loud, too, I--"

She didn't get a chance to finish her sentence, for Christian quite suddenly pulled her toward him and carried out that first kiss they hadn't quite gotten to in the café.

It was definitely way too perfect, Satine decided. Not that she was complaining.

~*~*~*~

I enjoy zee reviews...please let me know whatcha think... :):):)