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guerasrammficTitle: On the Practical Application of Rhythm Ib--COMPLETE
Author:laguera25
Rating: FRM/R
Fandom: Rammstein
Pairing: gen, mentions of Richard/OFC, Christoph/Regina
Warning: N/A
Disclaimer: Christoph Schneider is a real person with family and friends who love him. I am not one of them. This story and the events and attitudes therein are entirely fictional and should be read as such. Any resemblance to reality is pure, dumb luck. For entertainment only.
Summary: Christoph Schneider watches Richard dance and wonders just how it will all go wrong. It always does.
A/N: Takes place between chapters eighteen and nineteen of Die Sprache der Blinden
Part Ia
But Richard is not an optimist, a child of the sunlight with color in his cheeks and warmth in his eyes. He is a child of shadows and smoke, cultivated in the drab greys of East Berlin flats and raised under leaden skies. He believes in happily ever after, but has never tasted it, never rolled its sweetness on his tongue. He expects the raised hand to deal a blow instead of a caress and a lover's kiss to leave blood in its wake. He is forever hunched against blows that never come and awed by the unexpected tenderness he sometimes finds in the hands of a passing stranger. But there is never enough tenderness to be found, only blows and rejection and disappointment. Richard knows that he will never be allowed to remain in the rare oases he finds or carves for himself from the hard, indifferent soil of the world, but he savors them while they remain to him, sifts them through his marveling fingers and presses them to his face to better remember their shape and fleeting softness in the middle of the night.
And though he knows that the peace and happiness he found will never last, will shatter in his reverent hands or dissolve like the vestiges of a delicious dream, he never surrenders the naive hope that this time, fate would be kinder. He is a starving child on the edge of an orchard that he can never quite reach no matter how long he walks, legs trembling with want and eyes fixed on a glistening, ripe apple he will never taste. Richard is a hostage to the relentless taskmistress of hope, and Christoph has no doubt that he would gladly die in its thrall if he could do so with a kiss that didn't taste of blood and contempt.
Caron had been jaded and coarse and slyly manipulative, haughty and spoiled and proud of her petty cruelties, but she had been Richard's queen, a goddess of ice and silver. She was his bulwark, his pocket of warmth in an inhospitable world, and he would have brooked no criticism of her. He would have defended her until the last hard word and retreated even further into his world of highballs and gallery openings and cocaine passed around on silver serving trays, and they would have gone the way of the Beatles, sundered in their prime by hurt and stiff-necked pride and the warped self-righteousness of addiction. So, they'd held their tongues and watched her flay him one gelid look and cutting comment at a time, and at the appointed hour, they'd sat in the uncomfortable wooden chairs in neat rows atop a rolling greensward overlooking the Atlantic and listened to the swell of music that Richard had painstakingly composed for the ceremony. It had been lush and grandiose--so perfectly Richard--and it had been the perfect complement to the golden sunlight that had washed over the verdant green and the pristine, white pergola in a honeyed haze. The murmur of the sea had been a lulling, glottal rumble in his ears and against his prickling, salt-kissed skin as he'd flexed his toes inside his spit-polished shoes and shifted his rapidly-numbing ass in the unforgiving seat. Till had been a stone-faced bulk two rows ahead, imposing and uncomfortable in his suit and tie. Olli had been somewhere behind him, slender and solemn and bored. Olli's enchantment with weddings had died a hard death years ago at the hands of a brief career in a wedding band, and he had little patience for the pomp and ceremony of a disposable institution.
And Richard had been standing at the altar, all nervous smiles and restless, sidling energy. He'd been resplendent in his wedding finery, his starched, pressed linen shirt crisp and bright in the autumn sun. Excitement had reduced him to anxious boyhood, and he'd been the awkward, shy kid he'd met all those years ago in a dirty Berlin nightclub, exuberant and desperate to be liked. Affection had welled inside his chest like an incipient cough, and he'd turned his head and rubbed his nose with the back of his index finger to dispel an unseemly, burning tickle in his nostrils.
He had had no investment in the ceremony beyond his duties as a friend, and so most of the ceremony has faded from his memory, dimly recalled as "Richard's wedding" by his indifferent mind, but he remembers with perfect clarity the lovesick awe on Richard's face as Caron had marched down the aisle on her father's arm, a smiling sea nymph in her garish wedding dress, slender, toned belly exposed to onlookers and the languid caress of the sun. Richard's gaze had been worshipful and hungry and disbelieving, as though he'd thought her a mirage that would disappear before her father could pass her hand. His eyes had never left her, and when her father had placed her hand in his, he had clutched it with wet-eyed fervor. Even the officiating rabbi had noticed his unwavering adulation, and though he'd joined in the ripple of easy laughter that had greeted her gentle teasing, he'd also felt a pang of unease.
Oh, Richard, be careful not to lose yourself in her. There is a fine line between devotion and obsession, and if you cross that line, sometimes you don't come back, he'd thought as Richard had gazed at the sharp line of her jaw in rapturous adoration, but he'd held his tongue when the rabbi had bid guests to speak now or forever hold their peace, and when the vows and rings had been exchanged and the music Richard had so painstakingly composed had risen to a triumphant swell to complement the roar of the sea, he had applauded as loudly as the rest, and certainly with more vigor than Till, whose massive hands had come together with the ponderous thunder of a crumbling mountain. Because as much as he'd feared for Richard, he'd envied him that he could know such unflinching, unquestioning devotion to another, such unstinting faith in the fragile promise of happily ever after.
The promise had gone to dust in blood in a flurry of broken glass and white powder and strange underclothes in the couch cushions and the rumpled folds of the bedclothes, but then, set against the backdrop of the lighthouse and the softly-rumbling sea over which it kept eternal vigil, it had been sublime, lime and mandarin on the tip of his tongue and in the back of his throat as he'd watched them proceed down the aisle arm in arm, fingers interlaced and newly-exchanged rings gleaming.
He'd had his own brush with the sublime a few years later. No lime and mandarin on his tongue that time, but there had been the humid kiss of a Parisian summer night damp with rain and silver with moonlight. The desultory hiss of rain on warm pavement and the burble of rain-swollen gutters as he and Regina had strolled along the Seine. The air had smelled of wet earth and tarnished pennies and the sweetness of Regina's perfume. She'd been dark eyes and dark hair and a familiar sway at his side, fingers curled in the crook of his arm as they'd ambled over the bridge. The strident, reverberating clack of their footsteps, a metronome beneath black velvet, and the bump and scrape of her hip against his thigh. Sensual and preternatural in the moonlight, a slinking shadow that had nonetheless outshone the bright lights of the city and the reflection of the moonlight on the turbid river water that had whispered beneath their feet in a languid desfile.
He had asked for her hand that night, had professed his love beneath the moon and tasted the sublime. It had tasted of wine and starlight, thick and cool and intoxicating. His head had spun with dizzying euphoria, and his legs had gone hollow with adrenaline as his heart had lurched and stuttered and beaten an uneven timpani inside his chest. He remembers the smell of her hair and the daintiness of her hand in his as he'd struggled not to crush it in his grip. He remembers the rain in her hair and the dull spatter of it on the fabric of his shirt. He remembers the delicate flutter of her lashes and the curve of her lips as she'd pursed them to pronounce his fate. He remembers the brilliance of her smile as she'd cupped his face in her hands and bid him kiss her. Triumph and laughter and the slow revolution of the earth beneath his feet even as the bridge had remained steadfast and unmoving beneath them.
He'd known how Richard had felt that night, had understood the shuffling giddiness and besotted grinning and the moon-eyed staring with unrepentant clarity. He had been as lost to Regina in that moment as Richard had been to Caron when he'd pledged himself to her in the thin, looming shadow of a slumbering lighthouse. The entirety of his world had narrowed to the woman who had held his heart in the palm of her hand. Even Rammstein had been forgotten then, as insignificant as a mote of dust beneath his feet, and if she had asked it of him, if she had demanded it of him as the price for her hand, he would have left it without hesitation.
Madness, he knows now, but it was a madness to which he would gladly have succumbed. He is a pragmatist yes, and more grounded than Richard, who still gets stardust in his eyes, but even pragmatists suck at the sweet pip of hope and seek out warmth and kindness and a place to call home. Even pragmatists dream of heaven when no one else can see, and he had seen all of that in Regina's face when the rain had misted over it like a goddess' benediction.
He'd given form and voice to his unspoken hopes the following autumn in a cathedral in St. Petersburg, and Richard had been there, smart and smiling in his suit. He'd been swallowed up by Regina's enormous family, who had crowded the cool, stone steps in their wedding finery, but Christoph had caught a glimpse of his smile, effervescent and supportive, a flash of home that had inspired memories of matted dreadlocks and tatty jeans and fingers that never stilled, but fluttered and tapped and worried the stray threads that had sprouted had from their secondhand clothes and third-hand furniture like ingrown hairs. That had been all he'd seen of him; he had been too swept up in the eddy of celebration to do anything but let himself be tugged hither and yon by Regina's insistent hand. He'd had eyes only for her and the shared future to which he had so enthusiastically pledged himself, and she had been an ethereal vision in her designer wedding silk. He had been a man in thrall, mute and stupid and disbelieving as he'd followed her from table to table like a spoil of war. He had been afraid to tear his gaze from her, lest she prove a glorious illusion, a trick of light refracted by drops of warm, Parisian rain and momentary lunacy.
He'd looked at Regina then as Richard is looking at Calliope now, as though she were a scrap of the sacred amid the profane, an ember of Promethean fire that glowed amid the cold and barren wastes. Richard's hand settles on Calliope's hip, reverent and possessive, and when Calliope smiles, Richard laughs, her pleasure become his joy. His laughter is infectious, and soon, Calliope laughs, too, mouth wide and eyes narrow and hands rising to rest on Richard's shoulders. She leans forward to whisper in his ear, lips brushing the nautilus of flesh and rising to skim his temple. Richard laughs again and moves closer still, greedy for contact, and his eyelids flutter with pleasure. It's the expression of a man in the throes of languorous ecstasy, the expression of an addict gone to the embrace of his dragon, and worry settles into his belly, a low, roiling weight that shifts restively beneath his skin.
There's no basis for it. It's early, yet, but thusfar, Calliope has been everything that Caron was not--reserved where Caron was brash, and thoughtful where Caron was all sound and fury and intrusive bugling. Caron was ice and jagged glass, vengeance and pitiless anger. Calliope, on the other hand, strikes him as a fire nymph, warmth and restraint and quiet solemnity. Frankly, he's surprised she attracted Richard's notice as all. He is a magpie, drawn to flash and pomp and glitter. It's the hair, he supposes, the copper flash of it. It's living fire in the light of the ballroom, and Richard's fingers constantly seek out the copper strands and brush them from her forehead and temples. It certainly would have caught Richard's eye amid the drab, grey bustle of New York City, he who loves beautiful things and craves them as a vagabond craves the shelter and comfort of a soft bed of linen and eiderdown.
How she has maintained his interest is another mystery altogether. Richard thrives on excitement, chases it with white-knuckled joie de vivre. When he can't find it, he creates it. On tour, he's the last one off the stage and the last one out of the afterparty unless he's snared a willing bedmate and retired to his hotel room. His will-call list for backstage passes is usually the longest of the six, and he's often surrounded by a coterie of old friends and newly-acquired hangers-on. He's a two-fisted hedonist of the first water, and Christoph simply can't imagine him settling into a sedate life of books and lace curtains and quiet evenings by the fire. For a time, perhaps, but not forever, not until death did them part.
Who said anything about that? demands the voice of reason inside his head.
This is the man who proposed to his ex-wife within twenty-four hours, he points out. It's no stretch to assume he'd make the same mistake. He's hardly the poster child for prudence.
Maybe I want something different this time, Richard says inside his head, his face awash in the glow of a red Catherine's wheel, and there is a note of reproach in his voice, a pang of old hurt he can't quite suppress.
Christoph shifts in his chair and taps a lazy timpani against his thigh, the beats muffled by the thin, crisp fabric of his pants. Beside him, Khira utters a soft belch and giggles unsteadily at nothing in particular.
He can't deny that Richard has changed since his insufferable Mutter days, when his paranoia had been at its zenith and the only filter applied to his cutting, ugly, endlessly-jabbering mouth had been Paul's fist. He's still stubborn, still effusive and grandiose and inexhaustible in his torrent of ideas and opinions, but he's also calmer now, steadier. He listens to the world around him, and not merely with his ears. He absorbs the words and turns them over in his mind, touches them and tastes them and tests their mettle on his teeth, a prospector gnawing on a filthy ingot plucked from the silty bottom of the riverbed. Sometimes he can see the cogs turning in Richard's head during band meetings, can see the grind and clatter of them behind his narrowed eyes or in the pulse of blood at his temples. His transformation isn't complete, let it be known--Richard is still the most vocal and the most passionate and the most convinced of his vision, but he's no longer manic and grasping and wildly dictatorial, and though there have been some explosive volleys exchanged over the polished wood of a banquet table or through the thick, fraught air of a rehearsal space, he can usually be brought to heel by a quiet rumble from Till or a hand upon his shoulder. Whether by hook or by crook or by the administration of therapy, Richard has come into his own, grown comfortable inside his skin.
But not entirely comfortable. He's still restless and anxious to be heard, still sure that he's been lost to someone else's shadow. Or to their greater brilliance, an overpowering light with which his own small, fierce flame cannot hope to compete. He watches as Richard moves closer to Calliope, draws her to him so that her hands rest on his chest and her legs twine with his. He smiles, cocksure and yet painfully shy, and his hands are protective and possessive as they rest on the smooth swell of her ass or flutter solicitously around her face. It's braggadocio and vulnerability, stone built upon a foundation of sand, and it's also quintessentially Richard, a child of the moon who so desperately wants to touch the face of the sun. If Calliope is troubled by his closeness and incessant attentions, she gives no sign. She merely smiles and rests her head on his shoulder, the red of her hair a startling contrast to the black of his shirt.
But for how long? he muses morosely as Richard hides a triumphant smile in the soft thickness of her hair. How long until that patience and adoration becomes exasperation and irritation, before sweet nothings become bitter barbs and frosty silences so deadly and brittle that we hardly dare to breathe? How long before breathy moans and creaking bedsprings give way to angry shouts and slamming doors and phones slammed so emphatically into their cradles or onto the coffee table that the casings threaten to shatter like cloven skulls? How long until he calls one of us at three in the morning to fill the distance with meaningless, throaty chatter because he can't stand to be alone?
Richard has(or had, please God)a habit of squandering the goodwill afforded him, of souring even the most inexhaustible sweetness with his moodiness and his one-track mind and his constant neediness. Even Till, who counts him as his best friend and calls him a brother, has occasionally reached the end of his tether and distanced himself in order to save his fraying sanity. God knows how much Caron had endured before she'd thrown up her hands and walked away. More than most would have, he suspects. For all her faults, Caron hadn't been without softness in the beginning; by the end, she'd been hard as granite, all pith and seething resentment, wrung dry by Richard's insatiable need and his benevolent indifference as he'd lost himself in the solitary delights of his home recording studio.
He knows what will happen if it all goes south. He's seen it before. Richard will withdraw, fall into an uncharacteristic silence. He will smoke too much and eat too little and go for long walks, and when he returns from these sojourns, he will leave part of himself on the path he has traveled. He will write letters he will never send, scraps of which might one day find their way into his lyrics, and he will leave muttered messages on her voicemail, banal sonnets of the mundane delivered by a voice raspy with all the pleas pride will not let him utter. Sometimes she'll answer, and sometimes she won't, and when she doesn't, he'll sit at the table and drink beer in slow, contemplative sips. Soon, the times she doesn't answer will outnumber the ones she does, and when that happens, he'll sit at the table with a bottle of Goldschlager, eyes distant with the memories he can't throw out with the pictures and the letters to a dead love. His mouth will never mention her again, but his eyes will never stop.
He wonders if they've had The Talk. He doubts it. Her face is too open, too unabashed in its happiness. The Talk always changes that. It must by dint of its subject matter, unpleasant and bitter and niggling as sand between your toes. It is a thief of innocence, and it leaves its unhappy victims shocked and fumbling and blinking at the sudden shift in their formerly ordered world, clutching coffee mugs and couch cushions like driftwood in storm-tossed seas. The Talk always wounds no matter how gently it comes, always bruises. It stuns and blunts and breaks, the bearer of unwanted knowledge.
The Talk confers upon the recipient a shadow that never lifts. It settles over their faces like a mourning veil and in their eyes like mist. It dims the light in their eyes and mutes their laughter and creates a negative space that nothing can ever fill--not shared smiles or linked hands or joined bodies in the dark. Especially not those. In fact, those only serve to make the spaces wider and deeper and more terrible. If Calliope had heard the Talk, so carefully rehearsed and ugly for its selfishness, then she would not be so lively, so keen to weave herself into Richard's space. She would be hard and stiff and wary, face impassive and eyes inscrutable as she scanned the faces of the women who floated past in the arms of their dance partners, and there would be a measured distance between them even as they danced cheek to cheek, as though someone else were present in the elegant tangle of limbs, another body that pressed with a steady, inexorable weight.
He can't blame Richard for postponing The Talk, for savoring this sweetness while he can, before necessity makes him a bastard. The Talk spreads its poison far and deep and does its pernicious work in the still, small hours when there are no kisses or kind words to counteract its ill effects. Its damage is permanent, and it makes liars out of virtuous, lovely mouths. He would do the same if he were in Richard's shoes. He had made a different choice once upon a time, and he is still discovering the depth of his folly.
If he had known then what he knows now, then he never would have had The Talk with Regina, his beautiful Russian doll. He would have held his tongue and left her to her blissful ignorance. Better he a liar than she. But he had stupidly thought honesty the best policy, had thought their love impervious to the The Talk's corrosive gall, and so he had taken her hand and opened his idiot mouth, Pandora's Box in gum and teeth and wagging tongue.
She'd said she could handle it when he'd confessed the sordid truth of life on the road, and maybe she could when they'd they'd been entangled in one another and blind, deaf, and dumb to the outside world and the threat had been a speck on the distant horizon. But then the rehearsals and recording sessions had come, and with them isolation and separation, and the words that had seemed so rational when spoken over mugs of coffee and in the cozy light of their living room had returned to haunt him. Their long-distance conversations had been steeped in suspicion, and the line had buzzed and crackled with the tension of questions she didn't dare ask. His frequent calls home had done nothing to ease her mind; in fact, they had only fueled her paranoia, and after them, he had often felt battered and irritable and guilty.
He had hoped that the holidays would ease the strain, but it had only intensified. She'd been overjoyed to see him when he'd emerged from the gate with his carry-on in tow, and had rushed into his arms in a cloud of heady perfume and eager kisses. The happiness, however had been short-lived. She'd unpacked his luggage while he was in the shower, scrubbing strangers' stale breath from his skin, and when he'd come into the bedroom on a cloud of steam, she'd peppered him with questions about California. He'd thought nothing of it at first, had been soothed by the steady burble of her chatter and had relished the familiarity of her voice. He'd stretched out on their bed, damp towel slack around his hips, and let his head loll on the brace of his arm as he'd drawled lazy replies. He'd been content and half-asleep atop the clean, crisp linens, and he'd thought it good to be home.
Then the idle chatter of homecoming had become an inquisition, each question a needle thrust into his skin. Where had he gone when not locked inside the studio? Whom had he seen? Had he "let" the others drag him to strip joints and brothels? Had he given his number to any PAs or cocktail waitresses or passing women on the street? Had he taken a shower to hide the proofs of another woman's lips against his skin? He'd watched in logy incredulity as she'd seized one of his shirts that she'd so recently liberated from its Samsonite prison and brought it to her nose to sniff the collar for traces of a foreign perfume. He hadn't been angry then(that would come later that night, when he'd found her scrolling through the contents of his cell phone, jaw set and eyes fierce with concentration), only dismayed and bewildered. He'd spent the night professing his love and assuring her of his devotion, and when she'd finally been convinced, he'd been too tense and tired to do anything but stare at the television in desultory silence while Regina snored softly beside him.
Christmas had been a stilted, uncomfortable affair with Regina's family. Her relatives, who had known nothing of The Talk, had peppered him with innocent questions about his time in California, the mythical land of manufactured glamor, and when Regina's teenage cousin had asked whether the woman there were as gorgeous as they were in the movies, he'd nearly choked on his wine. Beside him, Regina had stiffened in her chair and stabbed her fork into her plate of sausages. The grease had reminded him of pooling blood, and he'd turned his head, suddenly queasy. He'd held down his dinner, thank God, and muttered some inane waffle about David Lee Roth being a better judge of those legendary California girls. He'd been pathetically grateful when Regina's dowager aunt had shot her grand-nephew a scowl of disapproval and changed the subject, even when the new topic of conversation had turned out to be when he and Regina planned to settle down and start a family. He'd squirmed in his chair and fortified himself with a prodigious sip of wine and fended off the keen-eyed inquisition with a round of noncommittal muttering. His answers had only stoked the fires of her family's procreative fervor, and the family had held rather heated court on the matter of their childlessness. He and Regina hadn't been consulted on the matter in the slightest, though he had been on the receiving end of several bony, pointed fingers and shrewdly calculating looks from her elderly female relatives, who had discussed his merits and foibles as though he were a plough horse at auction. He'd half-expected one of her aunts to peel back his lips and squint balefully at his teeth, but he'd been spared that indignity by the timely intervention of Regina's father, who had raised his glass and reminded the assemblage that such hectoring was hardly conducive to the desired result. He'd accompanied his pronouncement with a hearty laugh and a sly wink, and Christoph had mustered a polite chuckle and fought the impulse to disappear beneath the table. With that, the focus had shifted, and he'd spent the rest of the evening humming dutifully into his dinner napkin and avoiding eye contact with Regina's grandmother and aunts. Though the tide of conversation had turned, Regina's demeanor had remained frosty, and he'd watched her increasingly-savage assaults upon her sausages with mounting unease.
Before The Talk, they would have made a fond memory of the incident, have giggled at the mortifying absurdity of it over wine. After, they had driven home and stared at each other in sullen, bewildered silence. His attempts at conversation had been rebuffed by slamming doors and gelid looks and eventually, he'd retreated to the safety of the basement, where he'd tinkered with his kit and tapped out feeble rhythms that had faded into nothingness, smothered by the oppressive stillness.
Then the fights had started, savage rows that had reverberated throughout their once-cozy home. She had accused him of rampant infidelity, had called him a liar and a cheat and a callous bastard too busy being a rock star to be a proper husband. She'd confronted him after rehearsals, sniffing his collar for traces of unfamiliar perfume and rifling the contents of his wallet in search of condoms and strange telephone numbers, and when she'd found one, she'd waved it in his face as though it were incontrovertible proof of guilt, a blood smear on the edge of a dark and terrible wood. So sure she'd been, so convinced of his indifference and faithlessness, and no explanation could convince her of his innocence. He'd gotten tired of screaming into the wind, of seeing the hurt well in her eyes like bruises, and so he'd stopped talking and stop listening, had simply tuned her out and buried himself in tour preparations.
Rhythm, his constant and eternal companion, had deserted him. Everything had been too fast or too slow, jangling and discordant and out of time. Once, he and Regina had moved in perfect accord. Now, they never seem to meet. His fingers never find hers, and lips that had once met so feverishly now skim over cheeks and noses and foreheads. Words die on his lips, strangled and incomplete, or carry for a beat too long, thin and delirious and nonsensical to his ears. Worse yet, they never seem to reach hers. She turns her head or cuts them off with the closing of a door, and he's left dropping them into his morning coffee like coins into a wishing well. Hers are curt and brittle, grit cast against his face, and they sting and burn and nettle.
There is no equilibrium without rhythm, and so he flounders and blunders and stumbles over and through his muddled thoughts. He's exhausted and frightened and sad. His laughing Russian doll has turned to unsmiling stone. So when she had broached the possibility of visiting her family alone for the holiday, he had readily agreed, and he'd been surprised and ashamed at the wave of relief that had washed over him as he'd watched her board her flight, face impassive and carry-on slung over one slender shoulder.
It's easier to breathe here, surrounded by the familiar faces of two men he's counted as brothers since he was twenty-six years old. Here, he fits. The familiar joins still hold, worn but solid. He knows how to make Till smile, to coax a belly laugh from that massive frame and kindle the light in his eyes. He knows how to read Richard, mercurial as he can sometimes be. Here, he can still hear the rhythm that underpins the world, and he feels safe and sane, as though he has rediscovered his footing.
He knows it is but a brief reprieve. He will have to go home eventually, have to return to the suffocating stillness and seething resentment that permeate his house. Perhaps that bitter, unwelcome knowledge has colored his judgment and jaundiced his vision. Maybe he's wrong, and Richard and Calliope will live happily ever after, the intensity of their passion undimmed by the passage of time and impervious to The Talk's corrosive poison.
But no. Innocence never goes uncorrupted. There are only remnants, fragments of what used to be and might have been. He has his, a flash of warm skin and Parisian summer rain, and one day, Richard will have his. Maybe it will be this, this dance beneath an elegant chandelier in a hotel ballroom, warm laughter against his ear. More likely, it will be a moment Christoph will never see, a slice of heaven stolen from the slack fist of an unsuspecting god.
Maybe I want something different, Richard had confessed to the smoke beneath a red sky, and for now, he has it, and Christoph wishes him well.
But he also knows that he won't always, and he wishes he weren't so perversely, wretchedly glad.
He watches Richard smile as he dances with the fire in his arms, and signals the barmaid for a drink with a heavy hand.
Author:
laguera25Rating: FRM/R
Fandom: Rammstein
Pairing: gen, mentions of Richard/OFC, Christoph/Regina
Warning: N/A
Disclaimer: Christoph Schneider is a real person with family and friends who love him. I am not one of them. This story and the events and attitudes therein are entirely fictional and should be read as such. Any resemblance to reality is pure, dumb luck. For entertainment only.
Summary: Christoph Schneider watches Richard dance and wonders just how it will all go wrong. It always does.
A/N: Takes place between chapters eighteen and nineteen of Die Sprache der Blinden
Part Ia
But Richard is not an optimist, a child of the sunlight with color in his cheeks and warmth in his eyes. He is a child of shadows and smoke, cultivated in the drab greys of East Berlin flats and raised under leaden skies. He believes in happily ever after, but has never tasted it, never rolled its sweetness on his tongue. He expects the raised hand to deal a blow instead of a caress and a lover's kiss to leave blood in its wake. He is forever hunched against blows that never come and awed by the unexpected tenderness he sometimes finds in the hands of a passing stranger. But there is never enough tenderness to be found, only blows and rejection and disappointment. Richard knows that he will never be allowed to remain in the rare oases he finds or carves for himself from the hard, indifferent soil of the world, but he savors them while they remain to him, sifts them through his marveling fingers and presses them to his face to better remember their shape and fleeting softness in the middle of the night.
And though he knows that the peace and happiness he found will never last, will shatter in his reverent hands or dissolve like the vestiges of a delicious dream, he never surrenders the naive hope that this time, fate would be kinder. He is a starving child on the edge of an orchard that he can never quite reach no matter how long he walks, legs trembling with want and eyes fixed on a glistening, ripe apple he will never taste. Richard is a hostage to the relentless taskmistress of hope, and Christoph has no doubt that he would gladly die in its thrall if he could do so with a kiss that didn't taste of blood and contempt.
Caron had been jaded and coarse and slyly manipulative, haughty and spoiled and proud of her petty cruelties, but she had been Richard's queen, a goddess of ice and silver. She was his bulwark, his pocket of warmth in an inhospitable world, and he would have brooked no criticism of her. He would have defended her until the last hard word and retreated even further into his world of highballs and gallery openings and cocaine passed around on silver serving trays, and they would have gone the way of the Beatles, sundered in their prime by hurt and stiff-necked pride and the warped self-righteousness of addiction. So, they'd held their tongues and watched her flay him one gelid look and cutting comment at a time, and at the appointed hour, they'd sat in the uncomfortable wooden chairs in neat rows atop a rolling greensward overlooking the Atlantic and listened to the swell of music that Richard had painstakingly composed for the ceremony. It had been lush and grandiose--so perfectly Richard--and it had been the perfect complement to the golden sunlight that had washed over the verdant green and the pristine, white pergola in a honeyed haze. The murmur of the sea had been a lulling, glottal rumble in his ears and against his prickling, salt-kissed skin as he'd flexed his toes inside his spit-polished shoes and shifted his rapidly-numbing ass in the unforgiving seat. Till had been a stone-faced bulk two rows ahead, imposing and uncomfortable in his suit and tie. Olli had been somewhere behind him, slender and solemn and bored. Olli's enchantment with weddings had died a hard death years ago at the hands of a brief career in a wedding band, and he had little patience for the pomp and ceremony of a disposable institution.
And Richard had been standing at the altar, all nervous smiles and restless, sidling energy. He'd been resplendent in his wedding finery, his starched, pressed linen shirt crisp and bright in the autumn sun. Excitement had reduced him to anxious boyhood, and he'd been the awkward, shy kid he'd met all those years ago in a dirty Berlin nightclub, exuberant and desperate to be liked. Affection had welled inside his chest like an incipient cough, and he'd turned his head and rubbed his nose with the back of his index finger to dispel an unseemly, burning tickle in his nostrils.
He had had no investment in the ceremony beyond his duties as a friend, and so most of the ceremony has faded from his memory, dimly recalled as "Richard's wedding" by his indifferent mind, but he remembers with perfect clarity the lovesick awe on Richard's face as Caron had marched down the aisle on her father's arm, a smiling sea nymph in her garish wedding dress, slender, toned belly exposed to onlookers and the languid caress of the sun. Richard's gaze had been worshipful and hungry and disbelieving, as though he'd thought her a mirage that would disappear before her father could pass her hand. His eyes had never left her, and when her father had placed her hand in his, he had clutched it with wet-eyed fervor. Even the officiating rabbi had noticed his unwavering adulation, and though he'd joined in the ripple of easy laughter that had greeted her gentle teasing, he'd also felt a pang of unease.
Oh, Richard, be careful not to lose yourself in her. There is a fine line between devotion and obsession, and if you cross that line, sometimes you don't come back, he'd thought as Richard had gazed at the sharp line of her jaw in rapturous adoration, but he'd held his tongue when the rabbi had bid guests to speak now or forever hold their peace, and when the vows and rings had been exchanged and the music Richard had so painstakingly composed had risen to a triumphant swell to complement the roar of the sea, he had applauded as loudly as the rest, and certainly with more vigor than Till, whose massive hands had come together with the ponderous thunder of a crumbling mountain. Because as much as he'd feared for Richard, he'd envied him that he could know such unflinching, unquestioning devotion to another, such unstinting faith in the fragile promise of happily ever after.
The promise had gone to dust in blood in a flurry of broken glass and white powder and strange underclothes in the couch cushions and the rumpled folds of the bedclothes, but then, set against the backdrop of the lighthouse and the softly-rumbling sea over which it kept eternal vigil, it had been sublime, lime and mandarin on the tip of his tongue and in the back of his throat as he'd watched them proceed down the aisle arm in arm, fingers interlaced and newly-exchanged rings gleaming.
He'd had his own brush with the sublime a few years later. No lime and mandarin on his tongue that time, but there had been the humid kiss of a Parisian summer night damp with rain and silver with moonlight. The desultory hiss of rain on warm pavement and the burble of rain-swollen gutters as he and Regina had strolled along the Seine. The air had smelled of wet earth and tarnished pennies and the sweetness of Regina's perfume. She'd been dark eyes and dark hair and a familiar sway at his side, fingers curled in the crook of his arm as they'd ambled over the bridge. The strident, reverberating clack of their footsteps, a metronome beneath black velvet, and the bump and scrape of her hip against his thigh. Sensual and preternatural in the moonlight, a slinking shadow that had nonetheless outshone the bright lights of the city and the reflection of the moonlight on the turbid river water that had whispered beneath their feet in a languid desfile.
He had asked for her hand that night, had professed his love beneath the moon and tasted the sublime. It had tasted of wine and starlight, thick and cool and intoxicating. His head had spun with dizzying euphoria, and his legs had gone hollow with adrenaline as his heart had lurched and stuttered and beaten an uneven timpani inside his chest. He remembers the smell of her hair and the daintiness of her hand in his as he'd struggled not to crush it in his grip. He remembers the rain in her hair and the dull spatter of it on the fabric of his shirt. He remembers the delicate flutter of her lashes and the curve of her lips as she'd pursed them to pronounce his fate. He remembers the brilliance of her smile as she'd cupped his face in her hands and bid him kiss her. Triumph and laughter and the slow revolution of the earth beneath his feet even as the bridge had remained steadfast and unmoving beneath them.
He'd known how Richard had felt that night, had understood the shuffling giddiness and besotted grinning and the moon-eyed staring with unrepentant clarity. He had been as lost to Regina in that moment as Richard had been to Caron when he'd pledged himself to her in the thin, looming shadow of a slumbering lighthouse. The entirety of his world had narrowed to the woman who had held his heart in the palm of her hand. Even Rammstein had been forgotten then, as insignificant as a mote of dust beneath his feet, and if she had asked it of him, if she had demanded it of him as the price for her hand, he would have left it without hesitation.
Madness, he knows now, but it was a madness to which he would gladly have succumbed. He is a pragmatist yes, and more grounded than Richard, who still gets stardust in his eyes, but even pragmatists suck at the sweet pip of hope and seek out warmth and kindness and a place to call home. Even pragmatists dream of heaven when no one else can see, and he had seen all of that in Regina's face when the rain had misted over it like a goddess' benediction.
He'd given form and voice to his unspoken hopes the following autumn in a cathedral in St. Petersburg, and Richard had been there, smart and smiling in his suit. He'd been swallowed up by Regina's enormous family, who had crowded the cool, stone steps in their wedding finery, but Christoph had caught a glimpse of his smile, effervescent and supportive, a flash of home that had inspired memories of matted dreadlocks and tatty jeans and fingers that never stilled, but fluttered and tapped and worried the stray threads that had sprouted had from their secondhand clothes and third-hand furniture like ingrown hairs. That had been all he'd seen of him; he had been too swept up in the eddy of celebration to do anything but let himself be tugged hither and yon by Regina's insistent hand. He'd had eyes only for her and the shared future to which he had so enthusiastically pledged himself, and she had been an ethereal vision in her designer wedding silk. He had been a man in thrall, mute and stupid and disbelieving as he'd followed her from table to table like a spoil of war. He had been afraid to tear his gaze from her, lest she prove a glorious illusion, a trick of light refracted by drops of warm, Parisian rain and momentary lunacy.
He'd looked at Regina then as Richard is looking at Calliope now, as though she were a scrap of the sacred amid the profane, an ember of Promethean fire that glowed amid the cold and barren wastes. Richard's hand settles on Calliope's hip, reverent and possessive, and when Calliope smiles, Richard laughs, her pleasure become his joy. His laughter is infectious, and soon, Calliope laughs, too, mouth wide and eyes narrow and hands rising to rest on Richard's shoulders. She leans forward to whisper in his ear, lips brushing the nautilus of flesh and rising to skim his temple. Richard laughs again and moves closer still, greedy for contact, and his eyelids flutter with pleasure. It's the expression of a man in the throes of languorous ecstasy, the expression of an addict gone to the embrace of his dragon, and worry settles into his belly, a low, roiling weight that shifts restively beneath his skin.
There's no basis for it. It's early, yet, but thusfar, Calliope has been everything that Caron was not--reserved where Caron was brash, and thoughtful where Caron was all sound and fury and intrusive bugling. Caron was ice and jagged glass, vengeance and pitiless anger. Calliope, on the other hand, strikes him as a fire nymph, warmth and restraint and quiet solemnity. Frankly, he's surprised she attracted Richard's notice as all. He is a magpie, drawn to flash and pomp and glitter. It's the hair, he supposes, the copper flash of it. It's living fire in the light of the ballroom, and Richard's fingers constantly seek out the copper strands and brush them from her forehead and temples. It certainly would have caught Richard's eye amid the drab, grey bustle of New York City, he who loves beautiful things and craves them as a vagabond craves the shelter and comfort of a soft bed of linen and eiderdown.
How she has maintained his interest is another mystery altogether. Richard thrives on excitement, chases it with white-knuckled joie de vivre. When he can't find it, he creates it. On tour, he's the last one off the stage and the last one out of the afterparty unless he's snared a willing bedmate and retired to his hotel room. His will-call list for backstage passes is usually the longest of the six, and he's often surrounded by a coterie of old friends and newly-acquired hangers-on. He's a two-fisted hedonist of the first water, and Christoph simply can't imagine him settling into a sedate life of books and lace curtains and quiet evenings by the fire. For a time, perhaps, but not forever, not until death did them part.
Who said anything about that? demands the voice of reason inside his head.
This is the man who proposed to his ex-wife within twenty-four hours, he points out. It's no stretch to assume he'd make the same mistake. He's hardly the poster child for prudence.
Maybe I want something different this time, Richard says inside his head, his face awash in the glow of a red Catherine's wheel, and there is a note of reproach in his voice, a pang of old hurt he can't quite suppress.
Christoph shifts in his chair and taps a lazy timpani against his thigh, the beats muffled by the thin, crisp fabric of his pants. Beside him, Khira utters a soft belch and giggles unsteadily at nothing in particular.
He can't deny that Richard has changed since his insufferable Mutter days, when his paranoia had been at its zenith and the only filter applied to his cutting, ugly, endlessly-jabbering mouth had been Paul's fist. He's still stubborn, still effusive and grandiose and inexhaustible in his torrent of ideas and opinions, but he's also calmer now, steadier. He listens to the world around him, and not merely with his ears. He absorbs the words and turns them over in his mind, touches them and tastes them and tests their mettle on his teeth, a prospector gnawing on a filthy ingot plucked from the silty bottom of the riverbed. Sometimes he can see the cogs turning in Richard's head during band meetings, can see the grind and clatter of them behind his narrowed eyes or in the pulse of blood at his temples. His transformation isn't complete, let it be known--Richard is still the most vocal and the most passionate and the most convinced of his vision, but he's no longer manic and grasping and wildly dictatorial, and though there have been some explosive volleys exchanged over the polished wood of a banquet table or through the thick, fraught air of a rehearsal space, he can usually be brought to heel by a quiet rumble from Till or a hand upon his shoulder. Whether by hook or by crook or by the administration of therapy, Richard has come into his own, grown comfortable inside his skin.
But not entirely comfortable. He's still restless and anxious to be heard, still sure that he's been lost to someone else's shadow. Or to their greater brilliance, an overpowering light with which his own small, fierce flame cannot hope to compete. He watches as Richard moves closer to Calliope, draws her to him so that her hands rest on his chest and her legs twine with his. He smiles, cocksure and yet painfully shy, and his hands are protective and possessive as they rest on the smooth swell of her ass or flutter solicitously around her face. It's braggadocio and vulnerability, stone built upon a foundation of sand, and it's also quintessentially Richard, a child of the moon who so desperately wants to touch the face of the sun. If Calliope is troubled by his closeness and incessant attentions, she gives no sign. She merely smiles and rests her head on his shoulder, the red of her hair a startling contrast to the black of his shirt.
But for how long? he muses morosely as Richard hides a triumphant smile in the soft thickness of her hair. How long until that patience and adoration becomes exasperation and irritation, before sweet nothings become bitter barbs and frosty silences so deadly and brittle that we hardly dare to breathe? How long before breathy moans and creaking bedsprings give way to angry shouts and slamming doors and phones slammed so emphatically into their cradles or onto the coffee table that the casings threaten to shatter like cloven skulls? How long until he calls one of us at three in the morning to fill the distance with meaningless, throaty chatter because he can't stand to be alone?
Richard has(or had, please God)a habit of squandering the goodwill afforded him, of souring even the most inexhaustible sweetness with his moodiness and his one-track mind and his constant neediness. Even Till, who counts him as his best friend and calls him a brother, has occasionally reached the end of his tether and distanced himself in order to save his fraying sanity. God knows how much Caron had endured before she'd thrown up her hands and walked away. More than most would have, he suspects. For all her faults, Caron hadn't been without softness in the beginning; by the end, she'd been hard as granite, all pith and seething resentment, wrung dry by Richard's insatiable need and his benevolent indifference as he'd lost himself in the solitary delights of his home recording studio.
He knows what will happen if it all goes south. He's seen it before. Richard will withdraw, fall into an uncharacteristic silence. He will smoke too much and eat too little and go for long walks, and when he returns from these sojourns, he will leave part of himself on the path he has traveled. He will write letters he will never send, scraps of which might one day find their way into his lyrics, and he will leave muttered messages on her voicemail, banal sonnets of the mundane delivered by a voice raspy with all the pleas pride will not let him utter. Sometimes she'll answer, and sometimes she won't, and when she doesn't, he'll sit at the table and drink beer in slow, contemplative sips. Soon, the times she doesn't answer will outnumber the ones she does, and when that happens, he'll sit at the table with a bottle of Goldschlager, eyes distant with the memories he can't throw out with the pictures and the letters to a dead love. His mouth will never mention her again, but his eyes will never stop.
He wonders if they've had The Talk. He doubts it. Her face is too open, too unabashed in its happiness. The Talk always changes that. It must by dint of its subject matter, unpleasant and bitter and niggling as sand between your toes. It is a thief of innocence, and it leaves its unhappy victims shocked and fumbling and blinking at the sudden shift in their formerly ordered world, clutching coffee mugs and couch cushions like driftwood in storm-tossed seas. The Talk always wounds no matter how gently it comes, always bruises. It stuns and blunts and breaks, the bearer of unwanted knowledge.
The Talk confers upon the recipient a shadow that never lifts. It settles over their faces like a mourning veil and in their eyes like mist. It dims the light in their eyes and mutes their laughter and creates a negative space that nothing can ever fill--not shared smiles or linked hands or joined bodies in the dark. Especially not those. In fact, those only serve to make the spaces wider and deeper and more terrible. If Calliope had heard the Talk, so carefully rehearsed and ugly for its selfishness, then she would not be so lively, so keen to weave herself into Richard's space. She would be hard and stiff and wary, face impassive and eyes inscrutable as she scanned the faces of the women who floated past in the arms of their dance partners, and there would be a measured distance between them even as they danced cheek to cheek, as though someone else were present in the elegant tangle of limbs, another body that pressed with a steady, inexorable weight.
He can't blame Richard for postponing The Talk, for savoring this sweetness while he can, before necessity makes him a bastard. The Talk spreads its poison far and deep and does its pernicious work in the still, small hours when there are no kisses or kind words to counteract its ill effects. Its damage is permanent, and it makes liars out of virtuous, lovely mouths. He would do the same if he were in Richard's shoes. He had made a different choice once upon a time, and he is still discovering the depth of his folly.
If he had known then what he knows now, then he never would have had The Talk with Regina, his beautiful Russian doll. He would have held his tongue and left her to her blissful ignorance. Better he a liar than she. But he had stupidly thought honesty the best policy, had thought their love impervious to the The Talk's corrosive gall, and so he had taken her hand and opened his idiot mouth, Pandora's Box in gum and teeth and wagging tongue.
She'd said she could handle it when he'd confessed the sordid truth of life on the road, and maybe she could when they'd they'd been entangled in one another and blind, deaf, and dumb to the outside world and the threat had been a speck on the distant horizon. But then the rehearsals and recording sessions had come, and with them isolation and separation, and the words that had seemed so rational when spoken over mugs of coffee and in the cozy light of their living room had returned to haunt him. Their long-distance conversations had been steeped in suspicion, and the line had buzzed and crackled with the tension of questions she didn't dare ask. His frequent calls home had done nothing to ease her mind; in fact, they had only fueled her paranoia, and after them, he had often felt battered and irritable and guilty.
He had hoped that the holidays would ease the strain, but it had only intensified. She'd been overjoyed to see him when he'd emerged from the gate with his carry-on in tow, and had rushed into his arms in a cloud of heady perfume and eager kisses. The happiness, however had been short-lived. She'd unpacked his luggage while he was in the shower, scrubbing strangers' stale breath from his skin, and when he'd come into the bedroom on a cloud of steam, she'd peppered him with questions about California. He'd thought nothing of it at first, had been soothed by the steady burble of her chatter and had relished the familiarity of her voice. He'd stretched out on their bed, damp towel slack around his hips, and let his head loll on the brace of his arm as he'd drawled lazy replies. He'd been content and half-asleep atop the clean, crisp linens, and he'd thought it good to be home.
Then the idle chatter of homecoming had become an inquisition, each question a needle thrust into his skin. Where had he gone when not locked inside the studio? Whom had he seen? Had he "let" the others drag him to strip joints and brothels? Had he given his number to any PAs or cocktail waitresses or passing women on the street? Had he taken a shower to hide the proofs of another woman's lips against his skin? He'd watched in logy incredulity as she'd seized one of his shirts that she'd so recently liberated from its Samsonite prison and brought it to her nose to sniff the collar for traces of a foreign perfume. He hadn't been angry then(that would come later that night, when he'd found her scrolling through the contents of his cell phone, jaw set and eyes fierce with concentration), only dismayed and bewildered. He'd spent the night professing his love and assuring her of his devotion, and when she'd finally been convinced, he'd been too tense and tired to do anything but stare at the television in desultory silence while Regina snored softly beside him.
Christmas had been a stilted, uncomfortable affair with Regina's family. Her relatives, who had known nothing of The Talk, had peppered him with innocent questions about his time in California, the mythical land of manufactured glamor, and when Regina's teenage cousin had asked whether the woman there were as gorgeous as they were in the movies, he'd nearly choked on his wine. Beside him, Regina had stiffened in her chair and stabbed her fork into her plate of sausages. The grease had reminded him of pooling blood, and he'd turned his head, suddenly queasy. He'd held down his dinner, thank God, and muttered some inane waffle about David Lee Roth being a better judge of those legendary California girls. He'd been pathetically grateful when Regina's dowager aunt had shot her grand-nephew a scowl of disapproval and changed the subject, even when the new topic of conversation had turned out to be when he and Regina planned to settle down and start a family. He'd squirmed in his chair and fortified himself with a prodigious sip of wine and fended off the keen-eyed inquisition with a round of noncommittal muttering. His answers had only stoked the fires of her family's procreative fervor, and the family had held rather heated court on the matter of their childlessness. He and Regina hadn't been consulted on the matter in the slightest, though he had been on the receiving end of several bony, pointed fingers and shrewdly calculating looks from her elderly female relatives, who had discussed his merits and foibles as though he were a plough horse at auction. He'd half-expected one of her aunts to peel back his lips and squint balefully at his teeth, but he'd been spared that indignity by the timely intervention of Regina's father, who had raised his glass and reminded the assemblage that such hectoring was hardly conducive to the desired result. He'd accompanied his pronouncement with a hearty laugh and a sly wink, and Christoph had mustered a polite chuckle and fought the impulse to disappear beneath the table. With that, the focus had shifted, and he'd spent the rest of the evening humming dutifully into his dinner napkin and avoiding eye contact with Regina's grandmother and aunts. Though the tide of conversation had turned, Regina's demeanor had remained frosty, and he'd watched her increasingly-savage assaults upon her sausages with mounting unease.
Before The Talk, they would have made a fond memory of the incident, have giggled at the mortifying absurdity of it over wine. After, they had driven home and stared at each other in sullen, bewildered silence. His attempts at conversation had been rebuffed by slamming doors and gelid looks and eventually, he'd retreated to the safety of the basement, where he'd tinkered with his kit and tapped out feeble rhythms that had faded into nothingness, smothered by the oppressive stillness.
Then the fights had started, savage rows that had reverberated throughout their once-cozy home. She had accused him of rampant infidelity, had called him a liar and a cheat and a callous bastard too busy being a rock star to be a proper husband. She'd confronted him after rehearsals, sniffing his collar for traces of unfamiliar perfume and rifling the contents of his wallet in search of condoms and strange telephone numbers, and when she'd found one, she'd waved it in his face as though it were incontrovertible proof of guilt, a blood smear on the edge of a dark and terrible wood. So sure she'd been, so convinced of his indifference and faithlessness, and no explanation could convince her of his innocence. He'd gotten tired of screaming into the wind, of seeing the hurt well in her eyes like bruises, and so he'd stopped talking and stop listening, had simply tuned her out and buried himself in tour preparations.
Rhythm, his constant and eternal companion, had deserted him. Everything had been too fast or too slow, jangling and discordant and out of time. Once, he and Regina had moved in perfect accord. Now, they never seem to meet. His fingers never find hers, and lips that had once met so feverishly now skim over cheeks and noses and foreheads. Words die on his lips, strangled and incomplete, or carry for a beat too long, thin and delirious and nonsensical to his ears. Worse yet, they never seem to reach hers. She turns her head or cuts them off with the closing of a door, and he's left dropping them into his morning coffee like coins into a wishing well. Hers are curt and brittle, grit cast against his face, and they sting and burn and nettle.
There is no equilibrium without rhythm, and so he flounders and blunders and stumbles over and through his muddled thoughts. He's exhausted and frightened and sad. His laughing Russian doll has turned to unsmiling stone. So when she had broached the possibility of visiting her family alone for the holiday, he had readily agreed, and he'd been surprised and ashamed at the wave of relief that had washed over him as he'd watched her board her flight, face impassive and carry-on slung over one slender shoulder.
It's easier to breathe here, surrounded by the familiar faces of two men he's counted as brothers since he was twenty-six years old. Here, he fits. The familiar joins still hold, worn but solid. He knows how to make Till smile, to coax a belly laugh from that massive frame and kindle the light in his eyes. He knows how to read Richard, mercurial as he can sometimes be. Here, he can still hear the rhythm that underpins the world, and he feels safe and sane, as though he has rediscovered his footing.
He knows it is but a brief reprieve. He will have to go home eventually, have to return to the suffocating stillness and seething resentment that permeate his house. Perhaps that bitter, unwelcome knowledge has colored his judgment and jaundiced his vision. Maybe he's wrong, and Richard and Calliope will live happily ever after, the intensity of their passion undimmed by the passage of time and impervious to The Talk's corrosive poison.
But no. Innocence never goes uncorrupted. There are only remnants, fragments of what used to be and might have been. He has his, a flash of warm skin and Parisian summer rain, and one day, Richard will have his. Maybe it will be this, this dance beneath an elegant chandelier in a hotel ballroom, warm laughter against his ear. More likely, it will be a moment Christoph will never see, a slice of heaven stolen from the slack fist of an unsuspecting god.
Maybe I want something different, Richard had confessed to the smoke beneath a red sky, and for now, he has it, and Christoph wishes him well.
But he also knows that he won't always, and he wishes he weren't so perversely, wretchedly glad.
He watches Richard smile as he dances with the fire in his arms, and signals the barmaid for a drink with a heavy hand.
amazing
Date: 2012-05-03 04:09 am (UTC)Re: amazing
Date: 2012-08-25 03:21 am (UTC)