Title: Cute Boring Love

Pairing: Satine/Nini, Satine/Christian, hints of Nini/NA

Notes: Usually I try to avoid any type of song fic because I think they're so overdone and most of them are done so…sloppy, but I heard this song and I wanted to give it a shot. Still slightly hesitant in writing song fics, but it seems to be what's coming to me as of late. Characterization may be a tad off; I only watched the movie for the first time in a year a few weeks ago.

Call me a pessimist, but I don't believe in love at first site.

And we all know Christian and Satine's love was far from perfect.

Much is left to the imagination.

Flames? Go for it.

Song is "Cute Boring Love" by Blindside.

April 30th 2005: Song lyrics were removed because of bullshit new policy. No, I don't agree with it one bit. I believe that if credit was given where it was due, lyrics should be allowed.

If you want the version with the lyrics, feel free to ask.


She had mastered the act of leaving before dawn. It was as simple as rolling over and pulling her slender body out from between his arms and legs and gathering what clothes were scattered about on the floor. It had been a quick evening, she hadn't even undone her corset, laying awake beside him until she could get back to her dressing room to have Marie undo it for her. All too often she'd find herself backtracking to peck a kiss on his cheek just before making her way out of the door to act as a weak closure of kinds.

Making her way through the building and across the dimly lit streets was something she had grown accustomed to over the years and was quite nimble in doing so. Even at this hour, there would be men walking the streets, or waiting in the shadows to proposition her. She would bat her eyelashes and wave her hand dismissingly, without explanation. Walking away, she'd often contemplate going back. It had been a while since she had any money, what was one more fuck without meaning? She hated herself for the thought, even. Yet all the years before there was no distraction, there were the men, and then there was the wee hours of the morning which consisted of lurking back to a dressing room in the brothel to throw the jewels and francs on the table before heading out again, or picking up a half empty bottle of absinthe on the vanity and swallowing her sleep. Those were usually the times in which she contemplating her existence and would hope the Green Fairy would choke her to death.

As she entered the dark room, the glint of an absinthe bottle caught her eye, the light source leading back to the flicker of a match and a cigarette. Now that she had her own dressing room, the absinthe bottles were less common. Christian was usually careful not to leave anything lying about, and the other girls tend to smoke rather than indulge in late night visits by the Green Fairy.

Except one.

"'aven't you seen around for a while."

Satine shrugged without turning around. "I have somewhere to stay now. Why are you here?" She spun around now; Nini's face alit by the cigarette's smoldering ashes.

Nini shrugged. "'E fell asleep."

Satine half smiled. "So you just left?" It took her a second to recall who they were referring to, as narcoleptics usually do fall asleep at odd intervals.

"You're not much better, dearie," Nini retracted as she inhaled another puff of her cigarette, "leaving your poor writer alone ev'ry morning."

"He knows I have to go." Satine flinched slightly at what she had said, but knew it was the truth. The stronger side of her loathed being tethered to one person for a night, let alone the past few weeks she had been sleeping with him. There were times when she found herself preferring the promiscuousness she had indulged in long before her writer came along. At first it came off as something she had heard of multiple times before, the writer sleeping with the lead actress so that he get a higher wage or occasionally the gloating alone does it for him. For whatever reason, actresses, leading or not, were held in high regard as far as the sex went, not that it was any better or worse than any one else, though usually more experienced.

Nini struck a match and lit one of the few candles on the vanity, all nearly diminished from Satine's past nightly visitations. Candles were less obvious than the electrical lights and much easier to extinguish and explain. Using the mirror to rid of the cigarette's remaining ashes, the ones left traced a trail of black dust with an occasional glint of orange disappearing as quickly as it appeared, she pushed herself off of the vanity, sliding slowly until she was standing upright. Satine had turned to face the doorway by now, her way of threatening to leave without actually doing so. It was also her of way seduction in a way, of showing boredom, wanting something to happen. Something more. Better. Her way of asking for a quick fuck, but she was above saying so. And Nini would comply, she always had. Even if she hadn't meant it.

Her icy touch sent a tingle down her spine, such a light touch yet such a harsh bite of frozen air. It had been a while, weeks, even since she had touched her in a way, let alone touched by another besides him with that intention. Yet she kept her lips steadied as Nini undid the corset attached to her dress and began sliding it over her breasts and shoulders until the dress was over her face and thrown to the floor. She could breathe again. And it was refreshing. The men always had always fumbled with the corsets, her Christian especially, their nails to short to catch the laces on and their fingers to thick to edge between the strings and unlace them. She was quite nimble with the strings of a corset, having had to wear one and lace them up herself each day. The air entered her lungs much quicker this way than when the whalebones were pressed against her ribs, leaving them bleeding underneath by the end of most nights.

Nini had her arms around her waist, shoving her tongue between Satine's lips, forcing her atop the vanity, knocking bottles of perfume and absinthe crashing to the floor, smashing to pieces. Pieces as small and as cold as the diamonds this night would have been worth. Satine had given in, reaching behind to unlace Nini's corset and pulling it over her head as well. Nini pulled back for a moment, inhaling the deep freedom the corset had stolen from her. She wrapped her fingers around Satine's wrist, pulling her arm out from under her and forcing her hand upon her breast. Satine bit her lip and looked to the floor out of insecurity, even if it was something they had done countless times before the writer. Her eyes had drifted towards another absinthe bottle that had crashed and broken on the floor, the pieces individually refracting the light to their shape and the deadly green liquid still dripping off of them. It was at these times that she had wanted to take the shards of the bottle and slice Nini's fucking throat with it, leave it to bleed like the bite marks she had left trailing down her collarbone.

They had their parts now. She was no longer a whore, a courtesan, a can-can dancer, but an actress. The actress who carried out an affair with the writer while pretending to seduce a duke, who had held her in such high regard, above the diamonds and gems he had given her. The same diamonds and gems of which were scattered about on the floor.

To act as if situations had not altered since the last time they had fucked would be a lie; Nini was still the same whore she was then, carrying out her own affair with a narcoleptic. Even when Satine was off catering to her own business at night, Nini had her Argentinean. But there was always Satine, the girl she longed to be and even harder to fuck. If for no other reason than to prove she could do it. She watched each night, when the men came in off the streets, trading in their life savings, whether it be in money or jewels for just a night with this Sparkling Diamond. Yet here she was, at her fingertips; quite literally at the moment. They may have all spent a night with her, but they had no idea what pleasured her, nor did they care, it was all about their own needs. And she was just a toy to satisfy them. But Nini knew, having spent their nights off in the dark corner of a dressing room, no need to care who was around or who knew. She knew in which exact places to caress a little longer, to kiss, to bite, to leave to bleed. No other could say they had memorized her heartbeat in rhythm with the moans that were caught in her throat and freed by the same tongue that had severed so many hearts with its lies of love.

But if only her writer could see her now. Her hands between the thighs of another woman, leaving the her neck branded with teeth marks and smudged with lipstick, the same lipstick that had left prints upon his own lips that very evening. Satine had shamelessly given in again, once a whore always a whore, she supposed. Such was the business of showbiz, an occasional fuck as if to see if the were still any good at if, to share to the same mutual feeling, nothing more than fucking around. Or so it was said to be. And because it felt so good, to commit acts of love in such malicious circumstances.

There was a moment when the thoughts of her writer overcame her, when she stopped biting, left her mouth gaped open, eyes wide. When the hand that that still lingered near her breast shoved her away with blood stained fingerprints. When their shoulders collided when she thundered past as she stepped over her dress and reached for the robe hung off the corner of the mirror.

It was watching her pace through the door, carelessly pulling back her hair and smudging any trace of lip paint off her face with her palm without a word between them that made her remember why she had still loved her.

It always had ended that way.