![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Title: Die Sprache der Blinden 17b/?
Author:![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
laguera25
Fandom: Rammstein
Rating FRM
Pairing: Richard Kruspe/OFC
Disclaimer: Richard Z. Kruspe is a real person, with family and friends who love him. I am not one of them. I do not know him. This is a work of complete fiction, and should be read as such. No defamation is intended. For entertainment only.
Part I Part IIa Part IIb Part III Part IVa Part IVb Part V Part VIa Part VIb Part VIIa Part VIIb Part VIII Part IX Part Xa Part Xb Part XIa Part XIb Part XIIa Part XIIb Part XIIIa Part XIIIb Part XIV Part XVa Part XVb Part XVIa Part XVIb Part XVIIa
Two hours on, and that anxious, unspoken hope had begun to dim. He had been on the edge of a proper drunk, though the world had not yet acquired an astigmatic sheen that distorted familiar faces, cast them with too much flesh and not enough feature, gave them cheeks that stretched to the horizon and eyes that disappeared into the void. His vision had gone soft and malleable at the edges, though it could still focus, and he had focused it on Calliope, who had been deep in conversation with Christoph, chin balanced on her loose-fisted knuckles and empty fork dangling, limp and forgotten, over her plate of poached cod and kartoffelsalat. Her eyes had been polished emeralds inside her alabaster face, and the diffuse, unobtrusive light thrown by the crystal chandelier and the wall sconces had turned her copper hair into a crown of fire, a diadem of liquid flame that had made his chest ache for its loveliness.
It's your crowning glory, he'd told her not so long ago in the hotel suite. He had meant it as compliment and idle flirtation, a careless slip of poetry that would please her dreamer's soul, but there at the long banquet table, he'd seen the magnificent truth of it as she'd inclined her head towards Christoph's moving lips. Her eyelashes, too, had caught the light, sparks that had drawn attention to her eyes and her lips and that tantalizing curl that always seemed to find her temple, no matter how fastidious her attentions before the looking glass.
The curl had entranced him, and his tongue had darted out to moisten dry lips. His fingers had itched to reach out and touch it. He wondered if it would burn, spill over his fingers in a rush of phosphorescent heat and leave nothing but bone and gristle and stringy bits of ligament, or if it would be smooth and cool, a silk kimono against his skin. The latter, he'd suspected, and he'd longed to prove it with a lingering caress, but instead, he'd curled his fingers around his half-empty cocktail glass and raised it to his lips.
You might want to slow down on the booze, Romeo, Caron had advised sardonically, You keep going, and you won't even be able to operate your feet, let alone that big, oily mouth of yours. I don't think puking on her shoes is the best way to seal the deal.
He'd duly ignored her and watched Calliope as the scotch had burned in his throat and belly like envy. She'd been radiant as she'd talked with Christoph, animated and vivacious, the corners of her eyes crinkled in pleasure. Her eyes had been alight as she'd laughed at a comment he could not hear, teeth a pearlescent glint behind her pink lips. Christoph, too, had laughed, lips curled in a grin that was lascivious and mischievous, an imp cavorting at the feet of a bespelled queen. He'd seen that expression before, smug and contemplative and predatory, a wolf at the henhouse door, and he'd smothered a pang of unease with a swallow of scotch.
Don't be ridiculous, he'd chided himself. It's nothing. Besides, Christoph is married, happily, nauseatingly married.
That never stopped you before, Caron had reminded him bitterly. Or don't you remember all the times I found another woman's underwear in our bed?
This is different, he'd countered defensively. Bandmates' lovers are off-limits, and none of us would ever shit where we eat.
Except you, Caron had prodded relentlessly, and he'd taken a bite of tepid rotkohl and fought the impulse to squirm in his seat like a guilty schoolboy.
That, too, had been different, his bruised conscience had insisted, and he'd had no reason for guilt. Till and Angela had been long divorced by the time she'd come to his bed. She'd come to Till's door for a visit with Nele with four years of divorce and years of resentment in tow, and there had been nothing between her and Till but strained civility and a squealing four-year-old in pigtails reaching for her mother. He had been no thief of another man's passion, but had simply brushed away the ashes and unearthed the treasure beneath. Or so he'd thought then. In the end, she had asked more of him than he could give and left him with a snort of contempt and a last glimpse of Khira Li as she'd snuffled and fussed in her swaddling.
Let's not whitewash the past to make yourself less of an asshole, Richard, Caron had drawled. Till might've been over Angela, but it was still awkward for him to see his ex-wife sprawled all over his best friend like a cat marking her territory, and you were so besotted and up your own ass that you let her do it, but then, that's the trend with you. As long as you're happy and getting what you want, then you don't give a damn what it does to anyone else. And God knows what he must have thought watching her belly swell with your spawn. You certainly don't because you never bothered to ask. You were too busy reveling in the fact that your dick worked to talk about anything else. Oh, but you sure as hell wanted to talk when Angela walked and took your precious Khira with her like so much squalling baggage. Then talking was all you could do, all you had the strength for. You couldn't give a damn for Till when you were driving his former old lady into the mattress to the staticky rhythm of AC/DC and Depeche Mode on the radio in your dingy little flat littered with half-finished espadrilles and dirty t-shirts, but oh, when she tore the heart out of your chest and carried it down the steps in a bundle of ratty, pink blanket, Till was suddenly the most important person in your shattered world, the only sensible, solid thing in it, and you ran to him, spirit broken and tail tucked. You turned up at his flat at all hours and spilled your guts over bottles of cheap beer and pints of lager. You talked until you were hoarse, until not even the lager could soothe the raw, parched, ache of your throat. You recited the whole pathetic affair like a cleansing rosary, hunched over the table and croaking into your beer, and when your voice failed, your fingers took up the speech, plucking the words from the steel strings of your guitar.
And Till never complained. Oh, he rolled his eyes at your brooding melodrama and grunted unintelligibly now and then to show he was listening, but he never wagged his finger and said the words you most deserved to hear, never said, I told you so, while you sat in the corner and licked your wounds. He just sat cross-legged on the floor and smoked cigarettes and sweet hash and wove his baskets and listened to you rant and rave and coax the tears your eyes couldn't cry from the strings of your guitar. He was the bedrock upon which even sand must rest, and he let you rest with him until you were strong enough to move on.
So, you can just cram your pissy indignation. If Little Drummer Boy there steals your woodcut witch from underneath your self-absorbed nose and your perpetually-thrusting hips, it will be so much turnabout. If you get a blister or three from the shoe being on the other foot, so much the better.
It's not the same, and you know it, he'd persisted, and his rising irritation had been flavored with cod and dill and the vinegary piquancy of rotkohl. Theirs was an old love long dead, and there was nothing between them anymore but scar tissue and Nele. This--Calliope--is new, and its flame is bright and hot. It can burn if mishandled. She rests in the palm of my hand, and he has no right to snatch her from me.
She's not a doll, Richard, Caron had pointed out with sloe-eyed frankness. Not a possession to be passed around.
Calliope had looked up as though she'd sensed his scrutiny. "All right?" she'd asked cheerfully.
"Yes," he'd answered. "I'm glad to see you enjoying yourself. It suits you."
She'd laughed. "Thank you." She'd reached out and brushed her fingertips against his, and her eyes had flicked to and fro, cataloguing the presence of Khira and Merlin, who had flanked him on either side. Her laughter had ebbed, though her smile had remained firmly in place, and her hand had retreated to her lap.
Ah, he'd thought. A rare show of American prudery. God forbid my children know their father has a sex life. He'd resisted the impulse to roll his eyes, torn between irritation and pity. He'd considered pressing the issue, reaching across the crisp, white line and opening his hand in mute invitation until she either accepted or demurred, but he let the matter drop. There would be time to discuss it later, when they weren't surrounded by family and friends and chattering, excited children who squirmed in their seats in anticipation of sweets and fireworks. So he'd smiled and said, "Have you tried the rotkohl?" and gestured to a dish further along the table Light and teasing, and he'd chuckled when she'd grimaced and spared the dish a wary, baleful glance.
"No, thank you," she'd said emphatically, and swallowed thickly, as though the mere sight of the offending dish had provoked her mutinous gorge.
"You don't like rotkohl?" Christoph had interjected, and just like that, he'd captured her attention again.
Stop worrying, he'd told himself firmly. Christoph is quite married, and you're jumping at shadows.
You sure about that? Caron had asked slyly, and from the dimmest recesses of his brain, his father had laughed.
Yes, I'm sure, he'd spat at her, but he hadn't been. The more closely he'd observed them, the uneasier he'd become. Calliope had been animated and vivacious as ever, but there had been a pinched pallor around Christoph's eyes and a hollowness in his cheeks that hadn't been there when they'd parted for the holidays. It had been the haggard face of a man who'd spent many a sleepless night drinking lager and coffee at his kitchen table and tinkering aimlessly with one of his drumkits in his studio, fiddling with hi-hats and tightening heads and snares with the monotonous, unseeing rhythm of long practice.
Something's happened, he'd thought with dull certainty. Regina might've gone to Russia to be with her family as he said, but I doubt the holiday was the only reason for her departure.
I think you are jumping at shadows, my boy, a hare starting at the shadow of a hawk. Everyone wants to be with the families of their blood now and then, even those who have made families of their own. Holidays tighten the bonds we think we have loosened, draw us into a circle we can never truly leave. She has gone to be with hers as you are here with yours. There is nothing more to it than that, and even if there is, what of it? Sad, surely, but no affair of yours. Unless you think your enchanting American witch is truly so faithless and hollow as the country that bore her?
He'd scraped a hunk of cod from behind his molar with the blade of his tongue and watched as Calliope had absently brushed her errant curl behind her ear and inclined her head, the better to hear Christoph's reply to her sly, sharp-witted challenge. Envy had inspired a twinge in his belly just below the navel, clean and stinging as the nick from a switchblade. There had been no reason for it, no damning proof of treachery by one and duplicity by the other; there had been not so much as a hint of impropriety between them. Yet he'd felt it all the same, as irrational and helpless as the final thrust before orgasm, paralyzing and inevitable and idiot, embedded in muscles and tissues beyond the reach of reason.
The voice of reason could assume whatever benevolent guise it wished, could prate about shadows and articles of faith. but he would never shake the gnawing conviction that this was just another illusion, another fever-dream built on tremulous hopes and the gossamer strands of unspooling clouds. Calliope was strong and independent, sensual and fey and unapologetic, witchfire in his hand. A hard head and soft eyes and softer lips. Brilliant and delightfully mad and often bewilderingly American, and yet so desperate to be kind and good and sweet, to soothe hurts she could not see and for which she had not been responsible. An extension of her American arrogance, he'd supposed, to think she could right the wrongs of the world if she tried hard enough.
She was the stuff of fantasy, a creature of alabaster and fire, and certainly not for him, a bruised patchwork man who held himself together by the endless stitching of his fingers. An impetuous dreamer despised by his father and shunned by his mother and cast off by his wife and his lovers. She was divine, formed by a master's hands, no mote in her eye or sharpened beam in her mouth. He was terrestrial and profane, clumsily-wrought and indifferently tended. His hands were rough and stained with nicotine and the memories of sweet hash and cheap espadrilles and the rime of cocaine beneath his fingernails. He destroyed far more than he nurtured, abraded it and scarred it with inexpert handling and benign neglect. He was a careless child, and she a doll of priceless porcelain.
She was better matched to Christoph, who held more than a nodding acquaintance with books and who could discuss religion and philosophy with the authority of casual knowledge. Or even Till, with his brooding poet's soul and his love of art and music and his suave, woebegone charms, though he had been busily flirting with a rather buxom wine stewardess when he'd chanced a glance down the table.
You're hardly stupid, the Hungarian peasant woman had pointed out, and scrubbed her leathery hands on the coarse fabric of her apron as he'd hovered over a heavy copper pot he couldn't quite see. You taught yourself to play guitar and learned those five Tibetan rites of which you are so fond. You write music without a bit of training, music with which you earn your bread. She'd banged an invisible spoon against the side of the unseen pot, and then she'd shaken it at him, a wooden ladle that had been dark with seasoning and worn to a smooth finish from years of use and fastidious cleaning. You judge yourself too harshly. You have nothing of which to be ashamed.
Perhaps not, and yet the fact remained that Calliope had been born into a world of books and learning, rocked to sleep in a cradle surrounded by dusty hardbacks and thick, yellowing paperbacks and surrounded by the dense, learned writings of her parents. No doubt she had cut her teeth on the corners of her childhood books and been told at her father's knee that study and the pursuit of knowledge were the virtues that made men great. And he and her brothers had borne that out, no doubt, with their walls full of vellum and lambskin and dens full of books and family photos. The first man of her dreams had probably been a skinny kid with peach fuzz on his upper lip and a head full of Poe and C.S. Lewis and Kafka. Or maybe she'd dreamed of being swept off her feet by a dashing archaeologist with sand in his khakis and the shallow brim of his pith helmet and the desert heat in his cock and belly. Whomever she had dreamed of, it hadn't been a man who'd spent his adolescence sleeping on park benches and getting into schoolyard scraps and shunning the stultifying regimentation of the classroom in favor of smoking weed and daydreaming on the beach while the cool sand insinuated itself between his toes like a new lover's hesitant caress, and who had grown into an adult who had publicly proclaimed reading too time-consuming and demanding to hold his interest.
He was the last thing she had wanted, probably the last thing she had needed, with her calm, well-ordered life, but he had wanted her all the same, coveted her with a child's blind, grasping need. His lovers before her had been hard angles and jutting hips and cutting tongues that tasted of wax and smoke. They had been hard as stone beneath their supple skin and beguiling faces, ambitious and oblivious and unforgiving of his faults, eager to cut him to the quick and lap at the blood that welled from the cut.
Calliope, too, was possessed of angles and threaded with steel beneath the skin. He could see the glint of it in her eyes and hear the taut thrum of it in her voice whenever a conversation turned to the subjects of education and politics, but her angles did not cut his hands when he reached for her, and the steel in her spine never threatened to snap from its moorings and lash him like a punishing knout or curl around his throat like a garrote. And the angles and steel were complemented by languid, sensual curves and an intoxicating gentleness that left him boneless and soporific with contentment. She was quick to laugh and free with her affection, quick to kiss his temple or rest her head on his shoulder while he sprawled on the couch with one hand on his bare belly and the other holding the remote in drowsy fingers. She didn't shout or turn her biting sarcasm on him for the ugly joy of it. She didn't coddle him--she disagreed with him often and defended her views with bull-headed ferocity--but she handled him with care, as though he were rare and precious, and not a doll to be roughly handled and trampled underfoot when interest waned or the credit card reached its limit.
You're a good man, Richard Kruspe, she'd said once upon a time, had tossed it out with offhand confidence, an act of casual faith that had bewildered him. The memory of it had filled his belly with an indolent heat, a kiln from whence the coals had but recently departed, and he'd savored it, pulled it into his chest and the back of his throat, where it had tasted of chocolate and honey and the cinnamon dental floss she favored.
For a moment, it had been stronger than the jealousy that had bubbled in his veins like pitch and the scotch that had turned to so much whiskey-tainted water in his glass. Then Christoph had murmured something, low and indistinct. Calliope had laughed, bells and smoke that had drifted across the table like incense, and the envy had surged again, green and bilious and smothering. It had been absurd and unreasoning and brutish; she wasn't his chattel, to be claimed like a prize, and yet, he'd felt it all the same, a leviathan bitterness that had risen in his belly like a cramp and made his legs twitch with the restless urge to kick Christoph beneath the table.
That laugh was mine, he'd thought petulantly, sullen and ashamed as his eyes had followed the animated flutter of Calliope's hands, a conductor weaving word magic with an invisible baton. That irrepressible curl was my secret joy. He'd felt fifteen and stupid, all testosterone and inchoate adolescent angst, and he'd taken an indelicate quaff of scotch to steady himself.
A nudge at his elbow, and he'd torn his gaze from Calliope's dancing hands to see Khira gazing at him in fond amusement.
"All right, Vati?" she'd asked gaily, and her eyes had twinkled with a mixture of drink and knowing mischievousness.
"Yes, why?"
A sly grin. "Oh, nothing." She'd shrugged with feigned nonchalance. "It's just that you've been staring at her and Uncle Christoph for ten minutes."
"Was I that obvious?" he'd muttered, crestfallen, and slumped in his seat.
"A little," Khira had answered diplomatically. "It's kind of cute, really, to see you so jealous."
"I'm not jealous," he'd protested feebly, and promptly undermined his position by casting a furtive glance across the table.
"Of course not," Khira had replied with wide-eyed solemnity, and a smile had twitched in the corners of her mouth.
It was Khira who had landed him in this situation. Not deliberately, of course--she wasn't the sort to sabotage his relationships; after bearing silent witness to the anguish and disappointment of his failed marriage, she had quite rightly left him to his own affairs, though she had been friendly with Margeaux, had giggled over boys and gone shopping with her and accompanied them on lazy vacations, where she'd sprawled on the white sands of a beach in a deck chair, IPod headphones clapped to her ears and a trashy novel open on her well-oiled stomach. She'd learned that most of his liaisons were brief trysts in which she should take no interest beyond assuring herself of his happiness.
No, it had been youthful exuberance that had moved her to suggest that Christoph and Calliope sit together. When Christoph had admitted that Regina wouldn't be joining them, Khira Li had clucked in sympathy and asked who he would dance with for the discofox competition. When Christoph had shrugged and said that he would most likely sit it out for want of a partner, Khira had thought for a moment, and then she'd clapped her hands and bounced giddily on her toes.
"I know!" she'd declared. "Perhaps I can dance with Vati, and you can dance with Miss Connelly?" She had beamed at her sudden stroke of inspiration and looked from Christoph to Calliope in hopeful anticipation.
Christoph had opened his mouth and shut it again, and Calliope had blinked, caught offguard and trapped between her obvious discomfiture at the unexpected turn of events and the ever-present mandate for civility.
"Ahhhh, of course," she'd said graciously, and her hand had come up to sweep her curl behind her ear. "Of course. It should be fun." She'd offered a game smile, and then she'd retreated, hands behind her back, fingers of one hand curled around the wrist of the other.
Calliope had kept her distance ever since, had mingled freely with the other guests while ceding his attentions to Khira and Merlin, though the latter had spent most of his time unsuccessfully flirting with a bemused Nele under Till's baleful eye. She'd caught his eye now and then as she'd slipped through the stream of milling people, but she hadn't sought out his company, hadn't drifted up while he chatted with Khira and some friends from his Orgasm Death Gimmick days to slip an arm around his waist or idly tease the sensitive skin of his nape with her nails as she sipped champagne. In fact, aside from their brief exchange a few moments ago, they had hardly spoken.
Maybe you pissed her off when you called her your "companion" earlier, Caron had suggested with loose-jointed pleasure as she'd sprawled in the canopied four-poster, lips red and ripe and bloody against the white linens and the sun-golden sands just beyond the open window. The edge of a lace curtain had fluttered briefly into view, and he'd thought of Caron's wedding veil, caught in the sea breeze as she'd bid him follow her across the Montauk sand. He'd felt a pang for her then, for who she'd been at the beginning, before time and truth had spread their hands and let the rot set in. He'd picked up his glass of watery scotch and tipped it in silent salute.
Miss Priss might not've been too thrilled with her new title. Two notches above personal assistant and a discreet name for high-priced call girl.
He'd spluttered into his scotch at that. That thought had never entered his mind when he'd used the term during the formal introduction to his children earlier in the evening. He'd merely considered it safe, neutral, a word free of unvoiced expectations. He'd set down his glass and dabbed at his lips with his napkin, and Caron had smiled as he'd replayed the moment of introduction in his head, searching for evidence of some unintended hurt. But there had been nothing. Just a nigh-imperceptible tic in her cheek and a polite dip of her head as she'd extended her hand to Khira and Merlin.
Then why has she avoided you ever since? Caron had pressed.
Shyness? he'd countered feebly, and dismissed it immediately. Calliope was no shrinking violet. Misguided politeness? More plausible, that. She was always mindful of his comfort, always at pains to be unobtrusive. What had she said that first night in his Berlin flat? That she hadn't wanted to be a clingy man-drape? Perhaps she was trying to give him his space, time with his family and children. That her aloofness might have sprung from altruism rather than simmering anger had comforted him.
It had done nothing, however, to quell the gnawing jealousy and rising dismay as he'd watched her and Christoph. Christoph, who already had his lovely Russian doll, and who had had no need of Calliope, but who had shown his plumage all the same, had fanned it before her as he'd shared his opinion on books Richard had never cared to read and recommended books of which he had never heard. How sly he had been, how lupine as he'd watched her over the rim of his water glass, eyes alight with the pleasure of the hunt. And Calliope, canted forward in her seat, had been either oblivious of or indifferent to the game, a fox with lively eyes and an indolently-twitching tail.
Khira had interrupted his reverie. "If she's that easily swayed, then she's not worth your time," she'd said.
He'd hummed in response. "Maybe not, but it's not so easy as that. You'll understand when someone looks at you this way."
She'd shrugged and smiled around a mouthful of knackwurst. "Who says they haven't?" she'd answered slyly.
Oh, there was a thought he hadn't needed. He'd stifled a groan and groped for his glass of scotch, but when he'd raised it to his lips, he'd found it empty. He'd scowled at the slivers of melting ice that had quivered in the bottom of his glass, excised cataracts in suspension, and tried not to think of the pictures in her modeling portfolio, glossy photographs that bore unflinching witness to the truth of her growing up. They had shown, not his little girl in pigtails and dirty sneakers, gap-toothed and smiling as she ran from her classroom to greet him, papers clutched in her pencil-smudged hand like flowers, but a young woman in the full flower of her beauty, strong and sleek and fully aware of her loveliness as she gazed into the camera or sprawled on the floor with her spine arched and her breasts upthrust in sultry invitation. It was a posture he'd recognized, one he'd seen countless times from the sloshed groupies who had lain on his hotel bed in a sloppy sprawl, eyes distant and glassy and smile sliding off their waxen faces. He had been proud of her success as a model, fiercely so, but those pictures had made him sad, had threatened to rob him of more precious pictures by far, and so he'd had looked at them as seldom as possible, had let his eyes slide blindly over the glossy paper without registering any details. It had been the only way his father-brain had been able to forestall itself from conjuring unwholesome images of her pinned beneath some rutting, idiotic pretender with a big mouth and a head full of useless dreams.
You mean someone like you? Caron had needled, Cleopatra curled atop the bedclothes.
"Don't worry, Vati," Khira had assured him as she'd absently twirled the tines of her fork in the smears of sauce on her plate. "I'm not going to end up like Merlin."
"God, I hope not," he'd moaned, and eyed his empty scotch glass with longing. He loved his grandson, but he'd been in no hurry to repeat the experience with Khira, whose whole life had stretched before her, golden and full of promise. He'd swallowed the urge to ask her if she was taking the necessary precautions and closed his eyes against unwelcome images of some slack-jawed child scuffing his toes on the threshold of his flat and mumbling that he and Khira had had an "accident."
Christ, but these hadn't been thoughts he'd wanted to be having tonight. He had hoped to bask in the glow of love declared, to kindle the light in Calliope's eyes and spend the rest of the night with his feet off the ground, laughing and drinking and dancing and stealing kisses in the corners while the music blared and thundered along the gleaming parquet floor. He had thought to stand in the street with hundreds of thousands of his countrymen and watch one year bleed into the next, the flash of fireworks in his eyes and the smell of beer and gunpowder and Calliope in his nostrils. He had thought to watch the sun rise over the lingering haze of celebration with sweat cooling on his skin and the taste of cunt and nicotine on his tongue.
Instead, he'd found himself watching his bandmate sniff around Calliope as though she were a choice morsel and fending off images of his radiant teenage daughter sporting a conspicuous baby bump and wearing empire-waisted maternity clothes. It had been surreal, a farcical, inescapable nightmare, and his finger had risen to signal for another scotch, but the soft voice of pragmatism in his head had whispered that the night was young. If he got wasted before the plates had been cleared and the champagne flutes filled in advance of the midnight toast, then there would be no chance to right this course. So when a prim, white-jacketed waiter had glided over in response to his summons, he'd ordered a mineral water.
Khira's elbow had brushed his as she'd leaned forward to snatch a marzipan pig from the silver tray on the table, and for a moment, she'd been eight years old and sneaking Christmas cookies from the plate set out by her aunt, all wide grin and childish slyness. Then he'd seen the ruddiness of her cheeks and the glassiness of her eyes and realized that she was toe-deep in a drunk and sinking fast. He'd blinked in surprise and hollow-chested dismay, and never mind that he'd had his first blind drunk at fifteen, two years younger than she'd been that night. She'd smiled at him, all guileless innocence and owlish amiability, and nibbled on the tail of the marzipan pig, which had stared at him with bulging, spun-sugar eyes.
Is that what I look like to her? he'd thought as he'd watched Khira gnaw determinedly on the fragile tail. Some wall-eyed, red-faced, drunk German with booze on his breath and sweat at his temples? He'd looked from Khira to Christoph, who had been smiling around the rim of his martini glass, and who had, despite his indulgence in several drinks, been fresh and smart and keen-eyed as he'd watched Calliope explain the finer points of an American idiom. Well, fuck her, he'd thought bitterly. And fuck him, too, he'd added childishly as Christoph had tested the foreign slang on his tongue, halting and bashful and doe-eyed, helpless as a baby dormouse beneath her cool, feline gaze.
A triumphant caw from the Caron inside his head. There you go, Richard. Display that sound judgment for which you're so famous.
Shut up, Caron, he'd retorted listlessly, and turned in his seat to focus on his daughter and her dogged, piecemeal consumption of the marzipan pig.
Author:
laguera25Fandom: Rammstein
Rating FRM
Pairing: Richard Kruspe/OFC
Disclaimer: Richard Z. Kruspe is a real person, with family and friends who love him. I am not one of them. I do not know him. This is a work of complete fiction, and should be read as such. No defamation is intended. For entertainment only.
Part I Part IIa Part IIb Part III Part IVa Part IVb Part V Part VIa Part VIb Part VIIa Part VIIb Part VIII Part IX Part Xa Part Xb Part XIa Part XIb Part XIIa Part XIIb Part XIIIa Part XIIIb Part XIV Part XVa Part XVb Part XVIa Part XVIb Part XVIIa
Two hours on, and that anxious, unspoken hope had begun to dim. He had been on the edge of a proper drunk, though the world had not yet acquired an astigmatic sheen that distorted familiar faces, cast them with too much flesh and not enough feature, gave them cheeks that stretched to the horizon and eyes that disappeared into the void. His vision had gone soft and malleable at the edges, though it could still focus, and he had focused it on Calliope, who had been deep in conversation with Christoph, chin balanced on her loose-fisted knuckles and empty fork dangling, limp and forgotten, over her plate of poached cod and kartoffelsalat. Her eyes had been polished emeralds inside her alabaster face, and the diffuse, unobtrusive light thrown by the crystal chandelier and the wall sconces had turned her copper hair into a crown of fire, a diadem of liquid flame that had made his chest ache for its loveliness.
It's your crowning glory, he'd told her not so long ago in the hotel suite. He had meant it as compliment and idle flirtation, a careless slip of poetry that would please her dreamer's soul, but there at the long banquet table, he'd seen the magnificent truth of it as she'd inclined her head towards Christoph's moving lips. Her eyelashes, too, had caught the light, sparks that had drawn attention to her eyes and her lips and that tantalizing curl that always seemed to find her temple, no matter how fastidious her attentions before the looking glass.
The curl had entranced him, and his tongue had darted out to moisten dry lips. His fingers had itched to reach out and touch it. He wondered if it would burn, spill over his fingers in a rush of phosphorescent heat and leave nothing but bone and gristle and stringy bits of ligament, or if it would be smooth and cool, a silk kimono against his skin. The latter, he'd suspected, and he'd longed to prove it with a lingering caress, but instead, he'd curled his fingers around his half-empty cocktail glass and raised it to his lips.
You might want to slow down on the booze, Romeo, Caron had advised sardonically, You keep going, and you won't even be able to operate your feet, let alone that big, oily mouth of yours. I don't think puking on her shoes is the best way to seal the deal.
He'd duly ignored her and watched Calliope as the scotch had burned in his throat and belly like envy. She'd been radiant as she'd talked with Christoph, animated and vivacious, the corners of her eyes crinkled in pleasure. Her eyes had been alight as she'd laughed at a comment he could not hear, teeth a pearlescent glint behind her pink lips. Christoph, too, had laughed, lips curled in a grin that was lascivious and mischievous, an imp cavorting at the feet of a bespelled queen. He'd seen that expression before, smug and contemplative and predatory, a wolf at the henhouse door, and he'd smothered a pang of unease with a swallow of scotch.
Don't be ridiculous, he'd chided himself. It's nothing. Besides, Christoph is married, happily, nauseatingly married.
That never stopped you before, Caron had reminded him bitterly. Or don't you remember all the times I found another woman's underwear in our bed?
This is different, he'd countered defensively. Bandmates' lovers are off-limits, and none of us would ever shit where we eat.
Except you, Caron had prodded relentlessly, and he'd taken a bite of tepid rotkohl and fought the impulse to squirm in his seat like a guilty schoolboy.
That, too, had been different, his bruised conscience had insisted, and he'd had no reason for guilt. Till and Angela had been long divorced by the time she'd come to his bed. She'd come to Till's door for a visit with Nele with four years of divorce and years of resentment in tow, and there had been nothing between her and Till but strained civility and a squealing four-year-old in pigtails reaching for her mother. He had been no thief of another man's passion, but had simply brushed away the ashes and unearthed the treasure beneath. Or so he'd thought then. In the end, she had asked more of him than he could give and left him with a snort of contempt and a last glimpse of Khira Li as she'd snuffled and fussed in her swaddling.
Let's not whitewash the past to make yourself less of an asshole, Richard, Caron had drawled. Till might've been over Angela, but it was still awkward for him to see his ex-wife sprawled all over his best friend like a cat marking her territory, and you were so besotted and up your own ass that you let her do it, but then, that's the trend with you. As long as you're happy and getting what you want, then you don't give a damn what it does to anyone else. And God knows what he must have thought watching her belly swell with your spawn. You certainly don't because you never bothered to ask. You were too busy reveling in the fact that your dick worked to talk about anything else. Oh, but you sure as hell wanted to talk when Angela walked and took your precious Khira with her like so much squalling baggage. Then talking was all you could do, all you had the strength for. You couldn't give a damn for Till when you were driving his former old lady into the mattress to the staticky rhythm of AC/DC and Depeche Mode on the radio in your dingy little flat littered with half-finished espadrilles and dirty t-shirts, but oh, when she tore the heart out of your chest and carried it down the steps in a bundle of ratty, pink blanket, Till was suddenly the most important person in your shattered world, the only sensible, solid thing in it, and you ran to him, spirit broken and tail tucked. You turned up at his flat at all hours and spilled your guts over bottles of cheap beer and pints of lager. You talked until you were hoarse, until not even the lager could soothe the raw, parched, ache of your throat. You recited the whole pathetic affair like a cleansing rosary, hunched over the table and croaking into your beer, and when your voice failed, your fingers took up the speech, plucking the words from the steel strings of your guitar.
And Till never complained. Oh, he rolled his eyes at your brooding melodrama and grunted unintelligibly now and then to show he was listening, but he never wagged his finger and said the words you most deserved to hear, never said, I told you so, while you sat in the corner and licked your wounds. He just sat cross-legged on the floor and smoked cigarettes and sweet hash and wove his baskets and listened to you rant and rave and coax the tears your eyes couldn't cry from the strings of your guitar. He was the bedrock upon which even sand must rest, and he let you rest with him until you were strong enough to move on.
So, you can just cram your pissy indignation. If Little Drummer Boy there steals your woodcut witch from underneath your self-absorbed nose and your perpetually-thrusting hips, it will be so much turnabout. If you get a blister or three from the shoe being on the other foot, so much the better.
It's not the same, and you know it, he'd persisted, and his rising irritation had been flavored with cod and dill and the vinegary piquancy of rotkohl. Theirs was an old love long dead, and there was nothing between them anymore but scar tissue and Nele. This--Calliope--is new, and its flame is bright and hot. It can burn if mishandled. She rests in the palm of my hand, and he has no right to snatch her from me.
She's not a doll, Richard, Caron had pointed out with sloe-eyed frankness. Not a possession to be passed around.
Calliope had looked up as though she'd sensed his scrutiny. "All right?" she'd asked cheerfully.
"Yes," he'd answered. "I'm glad to see you enjoying yourself. It suits you."
She'd laughed. "Thank you." She'd reached out and brushed her fingertips against his, and her eyes had flicked to and fro, cataloguing the presence of Khira and Merlin, who had flanked him on either side. Her laughter had ebbed, though her smile had remained firmly in place, and her hand had retreated to her lap.
Ah, he'd thought. A rare show of American prudery. God forbid my children know their father has a sex life. He'd resisted the impulse to roll his eyes, torn between irritation and pity. He'd considered pressing the issue, reaching across the crisp, white line and opening his hand in mute invitation until she either accepted or demurred, but he let the matter drop. There would be time to discuss it later, when they weren't surrounded by family and friends and chattering, excited children who squirmed in their seats in anticipation of sweets and fireworks. So he'd smiled and said, "Have you tried the rotkohl?" and gestured to a dish further along the table Light and teasing, and he'd chuckled when she'd grimaced and spared the dish a wary, baleful glance.
"No, thank you," she'd said emphatically, and swallowed thickly, as though the mere sight of the offending dish had provoked her mutinous gorge.
"You don't like rotkohl?" Christoph had interjected, and just like that, he'd captured her attention again.
Stop worrying, he'd told himself firmly. Christoph is quite married, and you're jumping at shadows.
You sure about that? Caron had asked slyly, and from the dimmest recesses of his brain, his father had laughed.
Yes, I'm sure, he'd spat at her, but he hadn't been. The more closely he'd observed them, the uneasier he'd become. Calliope had been animated and vivacious as ever, but there had been a pinched pallor around Christoph's eyes and a hollowness in his cheeks that hadn't been there when they'd parted for the holidays. It had been the haggard face of a man who'd spent many a sleepless night drinking lager and coffee at his kitchen table and tinkering aimlessly with one of his drumkits in his studio, fiddling with hi-hats and tightening heads and snares with the monotonous, unseeing rhythm of long practice.
Something's happened, he'd thought with dull certainty. Regina might've gone to Russia to be with her family as he said, but I doubt the holiday was the only reason for her departure.
I think you are jumping at shadows, my boy, a hare starting at the shadow of a hawk. Everyone wants to be with the families of their blood now and then, even those who have made families of their own. Holidays tighten the bonds we think we have loosened, draw us into a circle we can never truly leave. She has gone to be with hers as you are here with yours. There is nothing more to it than that, and even if there is, what of it? Sad, surely, but no affair of yours. Unless you think your enchanting American witch is truly so faithless and hollow as the country that bore her?
He'd scraped a hunk of cod from behind his molar with the blade of his tongue and watched as Calliope had absently brushed her errant curl behind her ear and inclined her head, the better to hear Christoph's reply to her sly, sharp-witted challenge. Envy had inspired a twinge in his belly just below the navel, clean and stinging as the nick from a switchblade. There had been no reason for it, no damning proof of treachery by one and duplicity by the other; there had been not so much as a hint of impropriety between them. Yet he'd felt it all the same, as irrational and helpless as the final thrust before orgasm, paralyzing and inevitable and idiot, embedded in muscles and tissues beyond the reach of reason.
The voice of reason could assume whatever benevolent guise it wished, could prate about shadows and articles of faith. but he would never shake the gnawing conviction that this was just another illusion, another fever-dream built on tremulous hopes and the gossamer strands of unspooling clouds. Calliope was strong and independent, sensual and fey and unapologetic, witchfire in his hand. A hard head and soft eyes and softer lips. Brilliant and delightfully mad and often bewilderingly American, and yet so desperate to be kind and good and sweet, to soothe hurts she could not see and for which she had not been responsible. An extension of her American arrogance, he'd supposed, to think she could right the wrongs of the world if she tried hard enough.
She was the stuff of fantasy, a creature of alabaster and fire, and certainly not for him, a bruised patchwork man who held himself together by the endless stitching of his fingers. An impetuous dreamer despised by his father and shunned by his mother and cast off by his wife and his lovers. She was divine, formed by a master's hands, no mote in her eye or sharpened beam in her mouth. He was terrestrial and profane, clumsily-wrought and indifferently tended. His hands were rough and stained with nicotine and the memories of sweet hash and cheap espadrilles and the rime of cocaine beneath his fingernails. He destroyed far more than he nurtured, abraded it and scarred it with inexpert handling and benign neglect. He was a careless child, and she a doll of priceless porcelain.
She was better matched to Christoph, who held more than a nodding acquaintance with books and who could discuss religion and philosophy with the authority of casual knowledge. Or even Till, with his brooding poet's soul and his love of art and music and his suave, woebegone charms, though he had been busily flirting with a rather buxom wine stewardess when he'd chanced a glance down the table.
You're hardly stupid, the Hungarian peasant woman had pointed out, and scrubbed her leathery hands on the coarse fabric of her apron as he'd hovered over a heavy copper pot he couldn't quite see. You taught yourself to play guitar and learned those five Tibetan rites of which you are so fond. You write music without a bit of training, music with which you earn your bread. She'd banged an invisible spoon against the side of the unseen pot, and then she'd shaken it at him, a wooden ladle that had been dark with seasoning and worn to a smooth finish from years of use and fastidious cleaning. You judge yourself too harshly. You have nothing of which to be ashamed.
Perhaps not, and yet the fact remained that Calliope had been born into a world of books and learning, rocked to sleep in a cradle surrounded by dusty hardbacks and thick, yellowing paperbacks and surrounded by the dense, learned writings of her parents. No doubt she had cut her teeth on the corners of her childhood books and been told at her father's knee that study and the pursuit of knowledge were the virtues that made men great. And he and her brothers had borne that out, no doubt, with their walls full of vellum and lambskin and dens full of books and family photos. The first man of her dreams had probably been a skinny kid with peach fuzz on his upper lip and a head full of Poe and C.S. Lewis and Kafka. Or maybe she'd dreamed of being swept off her feet by a dashing archaeologist with sand in his khakis and the shallow brim of his pith helmet and the desert heat in his cock and belly. Whomever she had dreamed of, it hadn't been a man who'd spent his adolescence sleeping on park benches and getting into schoolyard scraps and shunning the stultifying regimentation of the classroom in favor of smoking weed and daydreaming on the beach while the cool sand insinuated itself between his toes like a new lover's hesitant caress, and who had grown into an adult who had publicly proclaimed reading too time-consuming and demanding to hold his interest.
He was the last thing she had wanted, probably the last thing she had needed, with her calm, well-ordered life, but he had wanted her all the same, coveted her with a child's blind, grasping need. His lovers before her had been hard angles and jutting hips and cutting tongues that tasted of wax and smoke. They had been hard as stone beneath their supple skin and beguiling faces, ambitious and oblivious and unforgiving of his faults, eager to cut him to the quick and lap at the blood that welled from the cut.
Calliope, too, was possessed of angles and threaded with steel beneath the skin. He could see the glint of it in her eyes and hear the taut thrum of it in her voice whenever a conversation turned to the subjects of education and politics, but her angles did not cut his hands when he reached for her, and the steel in her spine never threatened to snap from its moorings and lash him like a punishing knout or curl around his throat like a garrote. And the angles and steel were complemented by languid, sensual curves and an intoxicating gentleness that left him boneless and soporific with contentment. She was quick to laugh and free with her affection, quick to kiss his temple or rest her head on his shoulder while he sprawled on the couch with one hand on his bare belly and the other holding the remote in drowsy fingers. She didn't shout or turn her biting sarcasm on him for the ugly joy of it. She didn't coddle him--she disagreed with him often and defended her views with bull-headed ferocity--but she handled him with care, as though he were rare and precious, and not a doll to be roughly handled and trampled underfoot when interest waned or the credit card reached its limit.
You're a good man, Richard Kruspe, she'd said once upon a time, had tossed it out with offhand confidence, an act of casual faith that had bewildered him. The memory of it had filled his belly with an indolent heat, a kiln from whence the coals had but recently departed, and he'd savored it, pulled it into his chest and the back of his throat, where it had tasted of chocolate and honey and the cinnamon dental floss she favored.
For a moment, it had been stronger than the jealousy that had bubbled in his veins like pitch and the scotch that had turned to so much whiskey-tainted water in his glass. Then Christoph had murmured something, low and indistinct. Calliope had laughed, bells and smoke that had drifted across the table like incense, and the envy had surged again, green and bilious and smothering. It had been absurd and unreasoning and brutish; she wasn't his chattel, to be claimed like a prize, and yet, he'd felt it all the same, a leviathan bitterness that had risen in his belly like a cramp and made his legs twitch with the restless urge to kick Christoph beneath the table.
That laugh was mine, he'd thought petulantly, sullen and ashamed as his eyes had followed the animated flutter of Calliope's hands, a conductor weaving word magic with an invisible baton. That irrepressible curl was my secret joy. He'd felt fifteen and stupid, all testosterone and inchoate adolescent angst, and he'd taken an indelicate quaff of scotch to steady himself.
A nudge at his elbow, and he'd torn his gaze from Calliope's dancing hands to see Khira gazing at him in fond amusement.
"All right, Vati?" she'd asked gaily, and her eyes had twinkled with a mixture of drink and knowing mischievousness.
"Yes, why?"
A sly grin. "Oh, nothing." She'd shrugged with feigned nonchalance. "It's just that you've been staring at her and Uncle Christoph for ten minutes."
"Was I that obvious?" he'd muttered, crestfallen, and slumped in his seat.
"A little," Khira had answered diplomatically. "It's kind of cute, really, to see you so jealous."
"I'm not jealous," he'd protested feebly, and promptly undermined his position by casting a furtive glance across the table.
"Of course not," Khira had replied with wide-eyed solemnity, and a smile had twitched in the corners of her mouth.
It was Khira who had landed him in this situation. Not deliberately, of course--she wasn't the sort to sabotage his relationships; after bearing silent witness to the anguish and disappointment of his failed marriage, she had quite rightly left him to his own affairs, though she had been friendly with Margeaux, had giggled over boys and gone shopping with her and accompanied them on lazy vacations, where she'd sprawled on the white sands of a beach in a deck chair, IPod headphones clapped to her ears and a trashy novel open on her well-oiled stomach. She'd learned that most of his liaisons were brief trysts in which she should take no interest beyond assuring herself of his happiness.
No, it had been youthful exuberance that had moved her to suggest that Christoph and Calliope sit together. When Christoph had admitted that Regina wouldn't be joining them, Khira Li had clucked in sympathy and asked who he would dance with for the discofox competition. When Christoph had shrugged and said that he would most likely sit it out for want of a partner, Khira had thought for a moment, and then she'd clapped her hands and bounced giddily on her toes.
"I know!" she'd declared. "Perhaps I can dance with Vati, and you can dance with Miss Connelly?" She had beamed at her sudden stroke of inspiration and looked from Christoph to Calliope in hopeful anticipation.
Christoph had opened his mouth and shut it again, and Calliope had blinked, caught offguard and trapped between her obvious discomfiture at the unexpected turn of events and the ever-present mandate for civility.
"Ahhhh, of course," she'd said graciously, and her hand had come up to sweep her curl behind her ear. "Of course. It should be fun." She'd offered a game smile, and then she'd retreated, hands behind her back, fingers of one hand curled around the wrist of the other.
Calliope had kept her distance ever since, had mingled freely with the other guests while ceding his attentions to Khira and Merlin, though the latter had spent most of his time unsuccessfully flirting with a bemused Nele under Till's baleful eye. She'd caught his eye now and then as she'd slipped through the stream of milling people, but she hadn't sought out his company, hadn't drifted up while he chatted with Khira and some friends from his Orgasm Death Gimmick days to slip an arm around his waist or idly tease the sensitive skin of his nape with her nails as she sipped champagne. In fact, aside from their brief exchange a few moments ago, they had hardly spoken.
Maybe you pissed her off when you called her your "companion" earlier, Caron had suggested with loose-jointed pleasure as she'd sprawled in the canopied four-poster, lips red and ripe and bloody against the white linens and the sun-golden sands just beyond the open window. The edge of a lace curtain had fluttered briefly into view, and he'd thought of Caron's wedding veil, caught in the sea breeze as she'd bid him follow her across the Montauk sand. He'd felt a pang for her then, for who she'd been at the beginning, before time and truth had spread their hands and let the rot set in. He'd picked up his glass of watery scotch and tipped it in silent salute.
Miss Priss might not've been too thrilled with her new title. Two notches above personal assistant and a discreet name for high-priced call girl.
He'd spluttered into his scotch at that. That thought had never entered his mind when he'd used the term during the formal introduction to his children earlier in the evening. He'd merely considered it safe, neutral, a word free of unvoiced expectations. He'd set down his glass and dabbed at his lips with his napkin, and Caron had smiled as he'd replayed the moment of introduction in his head, searching for evidence of some unintended hurt. But there had been nothing. Just a nigh-imperceptible tic in her cheek and a polite dip of her head as she'd extended her hand to Khira and Merlin.
Then why has she avoided you ever since? Caron had pressed.
Shyness? he'd countered feebly, and dismissed it immediately. Calliope was no shrinking violet. Misguided politeness? More plausible, that. She was always mindful of his comfort, always at pains to be unobtrusive. What had she said that first night in his Berlin flat? That she hadn't wanted to be a clingy man-drape? Perhaps she was trying to give him his space, time with his family and children. That her aloofness might have sprung from altruism rather than simmering anger had comforted him.
It had done nothing, however, to quell the gnawing jealousy and rising dismay as he'd watched her and Christoph. Christoph, who already had his lovely Russian doll, and who had had no need of Calliope, but who had shown his plumage all the same, had fanned it before her as he'd shared his opinion on books Richard had never cared to read and recommended books of which he had never heard. How sly he had been, how lupine as he'd watched her over the rim of his water glass, eyes alight with the pleasure of the hunt. And Calliope, canted forward in her seat, had been either oblivious of or indifferent to the game, a fox with lively eyes and an indolently-twitching tail.
Khira had interrupted his reverie. "If she's that easily swayed, then she's not worth your time," she'd said.
He'd hummed in response. "Maybe not, but it's not so easy as that. You'll understand when someone looks at you this way."
She'd shrugged and smiled around a mouthful of knackwurst. "Who says they haven't?" she'd answered slyly.
Oh, there was a thought he hadn't needed. He'd stifled a groan and groped for his glass of scotch, but when he'd raised it to his lips, he'd found it empty. He'd scowled at the slivers of melting ice that had quivered in the bottom of his glass, excised cataracts in suspension, and tried not to think of the pictures in her modeling portfolio, glossy photographs that bore unflinching witness to the truth of her growing up. They had shown, not his little girl in pigtails and dirty sneakers, gap-toothed and smiling as she ran from her classroom to greet him, papers clutched in her pencil-smudged hand like flowers, but a young woman in the full flower of her beauty, strong and sleek and fully aware of her loveliness as she gazed into the camera or sprawled on the floor with her spine arched and her breasts upthrust in sultry invitation. It was a posture he'd recognized, one he'd seen countless times from the sloshed groupies who had lain on his hotel bed in a sloppy sprawl, eyes distant and glassy and smile sliding off their waxen faces. He had been proud of her success as a model, fiercely so, but those pictures had made him sad, had threatened to rob him of more precious pictures by far, and so he'd had looked at them as seldom as possible, had let his eyes slide blindly over the glossy paper without registering any details. It had been the only way his father-brain had been able to forestall itself from conjuring unwholesome images of her pinned beneath some rutting, idiotic pretender with a big mouth and a head full of useless dreams.
You mean someone like you? Caron had needled, Cleopatra curled atop the bedclothes.
"Don't worry, Vati," Khira had assured him as she'd absently twirled the tines of her fork in the smears of sauce on her plate. "I'm not going to end up like Merlin."
"God, I hope not," he'd moaned, and eyed his empty scotch glass with longing. He loved his grandson, but he'd been in no hurry to repeat the experience with Khira, whose whole life had stretched before her, golden and full of promise. He'd swallowed the urge to ask her if she was taking the necessary precautions and closed his eyes against unwelcome images of some slack-jawed child scuffing his toes on the threshold of his flat and mumbling that he and Khira had had an "accident."
Christ, but these hadn't been thoughts he'd wanted to be having tonight. He had hoped to bask in the glow of love declared, to kindle the light in Calliope's eyes and spend the rest of the night with his feet off the ground, laughing and drinking and dancing and stealing kisses in the corners while the music blared and thundered along the gleaming parquet floor. He had thought to stand in the street with hundreds of thousands of his countrymen and watch one year bleed into the next, the flash of fireworks in his eyes and the smell of beer and gunpowder and Calliope in his nostrils. He had thought to watch the sun rise over the lingering haze of celebration with sweat cooling on his skin and the taste of cunt and nicotine on his tongue.
Instead, he'd found himself watching his bandmate sniff around Calliope as though she were a choice morsel and fending off images of his radiant teenage daughter sporting a conspicuous baby bump and wearing empire-waisted maternity clothes. It had been surreal, a farcical, inescapable nightmare, and his finger had risen to signal for another scotch, but the soft voice of pragmatism in his head had whispered that the night was young. If he got wasted before the plates had been cleared and the champagne flutes filled in advance of the midnight toast, then there would be no chance to right this course. So when a prim, white-jacketed waiter had glided over in response to his summons, he'd ordered a mineral water.
Khira's elbow had brushed his as she'd leaned forward to snatch a marzipan pig from the silver tray on the table, and for a moment, she'd been eight years old and sneaking Christmas cookies from the plate set out by her aunt, all wide grin and childish slyness. Then he'd seen the ruddiness of her cheeks and the glassiness of her eyes and realized that she was toe-deep in a drunk and sinking fast. He'd blinked in surprise and hollow-chested dismay, and never mind that he'd had his first blind drunk at fifteen, two years younger than she'd been that night. She'd smiled at him, all guileless innocence and owlish amiability, and nibbled on the tail of the marzipan pig, which had stared at him with bulging, spun-sugar eyes.
Is that what I look like to her? he'd thought as he'd watched Khira gnaw determinedly on the fragile tail. Some wall-eyed, red-faced, drunk German with booze on his breath and sweat at his temples? He'd looked from Khira to Christoph, who had been smiling around the rim of his martini glass, and who had, despite his indulgence in several drinks, been fresh and smart and keen-eyed as he'd watched Calliope explain the finer points of an American idiom. Well, fuck her, he'd thought bitterly. And fuck him, too, he'd added childishly as Christoph had tested the foreign slang on his tongue, halting and bashful and doe-eyed, helpless as a baby dormouse beneath her cool, feline gaze.
A triumphant caw from the Caron inside his head. There you go, Richard. Display that sound judgment for which you're so famous.
Shut up, Caron, he'd retorted listlessly, and turned in his seat to focus on his daughter and her dogged, piecemeal consumption of the marzipan pig.