by She's a Star
Disclaimer: Moulin Rouge isn't mine. However, this strays veeeery far from the original version, so . . . hmm.
Author's Note: I just randomly started writing this and kinda creeped myself out while doing so, and then showed it to Dia (Gedia Kacela on Ff) who said that it sounded like it could be a very twisted MR fic. So . . . I've decided that's what it is. A completely alternate-universe, modern day (for the sake of erasers) Moulin Rouge fic. I honestly don't know where this came from. Um. Enjoy?
--I'll never be good enough, will I? she asks, and doesn't look at him.
--That's ridiculous.
He lies beautifully.
--I'm in love with you, she tells him.
He wonders odd things; poet's thoughts, he calls them. Is her blood scarlet? Crimson? Cerise?
If only he could spill it and find out.
This was wrong, of course. She never told him, but he saw it in her sad blue eyes. He allowed himself careful bruises (indigo, he decided) and no one else seemed to see how kind he was to her.
He could spill her blood, but he didn't.
He didn't, and he lived with the subtly pounding madness of ignorance.
He thinks perhaps it may be scarlet, like her hair. An endless red, whipping around pale skin, silky against his fingers when he tucks it behind her ear. Gently. He really does love her. Her pain is the most beautiful thing he's ever known. It is wrong, by society's standards - by the standards of the righteous and the pure.
He is not evil. He is not cruel.
He is a writer. He sits in front of white pages for days at a time, always using dark red ink - he never uses lined paper, and his words fall from left to right. Sometimes he can barely squeeze them onto the pages.
She used to dot her i's with hearts and stars.
She doesn't, anymore.
She only writes a few words now.
'Help.'
'Savior.'
'Please.'
Her P's look like the ones on Pink Pearl erasers.
Underneath the tears and wails and eerie deadened silence, she really is a sweet girl. He brings her roses once in awhile, secretly hoping the thorns will prick her fingertips.
They never do.
She is careful.
--My mum likes you, she told him. She thought you were charming.
He smiles, and kisses her hair. Ignores the way she flinches.
--Charming?
--She doesn't know.
He wonders why they keep these secrets. They feel dirty and distant and strange. He knows she lies about it - says she tripped down the stairs or her arm slammed against the wall when she was turning. She was a klutz, she'd say and laugh.
He kisses her wrist, very gently, and feels the faint pulse, envisions the line of blue under ivory skin.
What colour? It disturbs him. If only things were different; if he thought her a bit more alluring, less of a child, a bit more dark, unlike carefully tied ribbons and white flowers.
But to hurt her--
--We have eternity, he murmurs into her (scarlet) hair.
--Storm clouds may gather. (She doesn't say come what may anymore. He wonders why.)
Her smiles remind him of porcelain.
She chills him; it's bewildering.
He writes until the side of his hand is streaked with ink (sanguine, undoubtedly), and flips open the thesaurus to page three thirteen.
synonyms for red.