le collecteur

marcel gauthier. thirty-four. bookkeeper. debt collector. ask. about. face. interactions. moulin rouge.

[gxuthier-blog]

the-claudianoire:

When the door swung open a crack and Claudia’s face— her entire being fell flat. That was the daunting effect Marcel had on her. Claudia was loved a fair amount, her presence seemingly valued by patrons, dancers, and staff alike, but he was the only hold out. His authority as the keeper of all things of value to the Moulin Rouge hung over her head like a storm cloud brewing in the distance, far from her mind until she was forced to look him in the eye. Instinctively her entire frame tensed up at his straight face and cold, unmoving eyes immediately making her feel small, and pushing the lingering fear that only rose in her throat when he stared at her intently.

Still there was no stopping him from sliding his way into her space, she closed her eyes and took a deep breath as she closed the door. This wasn’t the first time they’d danced this dance. She danced around his questions and he continued the steps around her excuses. “It’s a pleasure to see you as always, Marcel.” She mused nonchalantly, regaining composure as she moved to sit on the bed. She was purposely avoiding answering his question, but they both knew she didn’t need to answer. “I did miss these visits between the two of us, they make me feel at home.”

He was a man of little patience on his best days, counting his words carefully, each action performed with meaning, with purpose. These dancers, a kind whose flourishes had always been decorative and superfluous by nature, operated differently. This cat-and-mouse game he played with Claudia was one of few dances Marcel could perform with ease, but that made the chase no less frustrating, and the final assertion of victory no less euphoric.

Drawing a breath, hands slid into his pockets as he watched the girl sit herself on the bed. He continued to stand tall, venturing towards her with slow steps, the cast of his shadow over her eclipsing half her face. “You and I both know it’s never been a pleasure. Not for you, at the very least.” There was, admittedly, something he got from it all — the surge of power to be found in reminding her where she stood. Surely, she’d be a masochist to feel the same.

“I asked you a question,” he growled, and as his impatience festered, a hand balled into a fist inside his pocket, twisting fabric tight between his fingers. “And I’ll take your avoidance as my answer. It’s been a week. You don’t mean to tell me you’re already inhaling whatever profits you’ve made, do you?”

[gxuthier-blog]

charlotte-leigh:

       Lots of clients had a tendency to feel as if they were above all of this, as if they could walk away whenever they wanted to. It was all too easy for her to contort herself into what they wanted of her, spin together a beautiful fantasy of whatever they wanted her to be to keep them coming back. When she was with Marcel, she was ditzy and doting; letting him believe that he was too smart to fall prey to the games she played – and what a fun game it was. One that she was rarely beaten at.

       Her green eyes watch with intent as he looks her up and down, practically burning holes into her skin as he goes. She doesn’t mind. 

       “Aren’t you funny?” The pink painted smile on her face is her best accessory, her fingers walking their way up his arm to his shoulder. She gives it a playful squeeze and leans down to place a small peck on his shoulder. “Do you think I have?” 

       Her success in this position had been many years in the making. He was more naive than she would have guessed if he were to believe that six months away from this place would cause her to forget how to do her job. From the time she woke up from the time she went to bed, she played a part, the way it had always been. A giggle falls from between her pink pursed lips.

       “Isn’t it so taxing to always be working like this? You must be exhausted,” she sighs, “I could give you quite the distraction, indeed. Perhaps you could even let yourself relax a little, yes? I could help you work out some of that tense energy. You could come back to work as good as new… or you could even stay with me.”

He’d been called many things in his life. Funny had never been one of them, but as the word slipped from between the edges of her smile, he wanted, just for a moment, to believe it. Therein lied Charlotte’s magic, the reason he allowed his hands to slide his pen back into the pocket of his jacket and fold his notebook shut. The fantasy she sold him wasn’t that of a king and his maiden, or a knight and his damsel, or any other of the elaborate facades that the club’s regulars paid so handsomely for. What shook him, drew his eyes like a magnet to those parted pink lips, was how close it felt to being real.

Her giggle synced in perfect time with the retort he’d shot back towards her. The better, smarter part of himself asserted that it was simply part of the act. Rehearsed. The same siren song she sang to foolish, weaker men. 

Lest he forget, there had been a time, before the Moulin Rouge had reciprocated his need for it, that Marcel himself had been one of those fools, too. Even as he sat beside her, her fingers squeezing around his arm, he tried for a desperate moment to believe he wasn’t the same fool. That he knew better.

“Of course you haven’t,” he conceded, with another hard swallow of his scotch. “I know how busy you’ve been tonight alone. They all but line up for you.” Those were facts. He liked facts. It was far easier to answer her question with the empirical, pointing towards the other desperate souls in need of what she could give, than to dare voice that his skin still warmed under the gentle graze of her fingertips. “Nothing’s changed here for you, has it?”

Isn’t it so taxing, to always be working like this? You must be exhausted.

“I could ask you the same,” he snapped back, fuelled by cruel instinct, pride, and an insecurity that end-of-the-night desperation to make her numbers was all that had led her to his side. Then again, Charlotte needed no help with quotas, he reminded himself, and the thought was comforting enough to lead his palm towards the inside of her thigh, resting gently against the skin he knew better than he should have. 

He allowed himself a pause, a breath, before eyes trailed up from her legs, along her sides, back to that haunting gaze of hers. “You always did give a compelling spiel,” he admitted, and while fingertips dug into the flesh of her thigh, his other hand drew the wallet from his pocket, placing it on the table between them. 

“Convince me.” His eyes widened, lips straight. “Why you tonight? Why shouldn’t I see what our fresh faces have to offer, instead?”

As his blood pumped faster, he could only hope she’d call his bluff.

[gxuthier-blog]

PSA that in an hour or so I'm off to start a 24 hour scavenger hunt?? SO I'm going to be a bit MIA until tomorrow evening, which means replies (and likely some starters too, lets get this angst train rolling!!) will be on hold until I'm home tomorrow! I'll likely be mobile lurking the whole time though, so expect me to pop in on discord to reply to messages every now and again, and if you wanted to throw up a starter for Marcel and your babe that I could reply to once these shenanigans are over.. I wouldn't mind 😏😏 OK BYE FOR NOW WISH ME LUCK!!

[vaememes]

*   MOULIN   ROUGE   SENTENCE   STARTERS  !

CHANGE PRONOUNS AS NEEDED / AS YOU SEE FIT !

❝ Silly of me, to think y-you could fall in love with someone like me. ❞

❝ Can’t fall in love? But a life without love, that-that-that’s terrible! ❞

❝ Come what may… come what may. I will love you, until my dying day! ❞

❝ It’s a little bit funny this feeling inside. ❞

❝ The greatest thing you’ll ever learn is just to love and be loved in return. ❞

❝ I’m not one of those who can easily hide… ❞

❝ You’re free to leave me, but just don’t deceive me. ❞

❝ Thank you for curing me of my ridiculous obsession with love. ❞

❝ I went to my typewriter, I sat down, and I wrote our story. ❞

❝ I’m paid to make men believe what they want to believe. ❞

❝ You’re going to be bad for business, I can tell. ❞

❝ The difference between you and I is that you can leave anytime you choose. ❞

❝ If I should die… this very moment.. I wouldn’t fear.  ❞

❝ Outside it may be raining, but in here it’s entertaining! ❞

❝ You can hardly blame me for trying to hide, uh, Christian away. ❞

❝ We’re creatures of the underworld. We can’t afford to love. ❞

❝ And in the end should someone die? ❞

❝ It’s not that I’m a jealous man, I just don’t like other people touching my things! ❞

❝ The greatest thing you’ll ever learn is just to love and be loved in return. ❞

❝ Stand your ground for freedom, beauty, truth & love. ❞

❝ All right! No problems! Go back to work! ❞

❝ The hills are incarnate with symphonic melodies! ❞

❝ Never fall in love with a woman who sells herself. ❞

❝ She suddenly had a terrible desire…to go to a priest and…confess her sins. ❞

❝ It’s nothing. It’s just an infatuation… it’s nothing. ❞

❝ Things aren’t always the way they seem. ❞

❝ Love is a many-splendored thing. Love lifts us up where we belong! ❞

❝ Don't…leave me this way. I can’t survive, without your sweet love, oh baby… ❞

❝ I was made for loving you, baby, you were made for loving me. ❞

❝ Just one night, give me just one night. ❞

❝ In the name of love, one night in the name of love. ❞

❝ Love makes us act like we are fools. ❞

❝ We could be heroes … Just for one day. ❞

❝ We should be lovers, and that’s a fact. ❞

❝ You’d think that people would have had enough of silly love songs. ❞

❝ Well, what’s wrong with that? ❞ 

❝ Just because I … will always love you. ❞

❝ Love is just a game. ❞

❝ Please don’t start that again. ❞

❝ The only way of loving me, baby, is to pay a lovely fee.. ❞

❝ The greatest thing, you’ll ever learn, is just to love, and be loved … in return. ❞

❝ I know what love is, only because I long for it with every fiber of my being. ❞

❝ It will be rehearsed in the morning, ready for the opening tomorrow night… ❞

❝ I don’t like this ending… ❞

❝ All my life you made believe I was only worth what someone would pay for me! ❞

❝ But there was only one problem…..I’ve never been in love! ❞

❝ The most beautiful of all these was the woman I loved. ❞

❝ We could be heroes, forever and ever! … We could be heroes, forever and ever! ❞

[gxuthier-blog]

charlotte-leigh:

       It felt like returning home after a long day. The music and the lights that filled the club had long since cast their spell on her, but the people that frequented her beloved establishment were a welcome bonus. The regulars of the Moulin made her job all the more pleasant. When she spotted Marcel tucked away in a booth, no doubt busying himself with work, Charlotte couldn’t help but get excited. He is a frequent client, and one that she enjoys working with. It is a game for her, always promising him more next time to keep him coming back. She reaches behind the bar to pour a cup of scotch before approaching him, heels clicking in a rhythm against the floor. 

       “Me?” she tsks, setting the drink down in front of him, “come now, mon cher, would you really think that?” A smile pulls onto her face as she slinks into the booth next to him, draping her hand over his shoulder. This is her favorite part of her job – painting the picture of what is to come. 

       “Don’t tell me that you’ve been working too hard, already. Why don’t you let me distract you?”

He glanced up at her, taking a long sip of the scotch Charlotte had slid in front of him, eyes locked with hers all the while, until suddenly her hips brushed up against him, her fingertips resting on his arm, her purr resonating. He’d never been able to resist the temptations of the Moulin Rouge, but even worse, he’d never been able to resist her. Her game, the game all the courtesans played, was one Marcel liked to think he understood — an act, a commodity to be traded, a transaction. He, unlike the rows of fools whose names lined his ledger of outstanding debts, didn’t mistake her company for anything but what it was — which made it so easy to let himself indulge in the occasional night of unadulterated fantasy, knowing exactly what he’d get each time.

At least, that’s what he found comfort in telling himself — that he was different than the desperate souls who needed a girl like Charlotte, because unlike them, he knew the rules.

Perhaps the very idea that she allowed him to think so proved that she was winning.

A slow turn of his head aligned his eyes with hers for a moment, before allowing them to trail to the hair draped over her shoulder, down her arm, over her hips, towards the thighs crossed before him..

He swallowed. Eyes darted back upwards.

“We’ve all been away for a while,” he noted. “Who’s to say you haven’t lost your touch?”

She hadn’t. The hand she had over his shoulder doubled his pulse, as flashes of memory recalled just what else those hands were capable of. But he wouldn’t give her the satisfaction of saying so.

Surely, his hard exhale gave him away.

“Someone’s short,” he grunted, “which means my night is only beginning.” He allowed himself a single quick flicker of his eyes down to her lips. “It would have to be quite the distraction.”

[gxuthier-blog]

the-claudianoire:

MARCEL

There was something about the loneliness that came with the end of the night, the kind that was quiet and left you alone with the thoughts that stayed hidden in the corners of self pity and the weight of ones sadness. Claudia despised it more than anything, hated being chained to the things that hurt her the most, but thankfully she had the remedy at her fingertips. Her lamp was soon burning at the right temperature, lying next to it on a bed she made of pillows and blankets. It was easier than doing the act in her bed, no chance of setting her self aflame on accident like she stories she’d heard in den after den. In her hand was the pipe she needed to get herself to that height, lingering over the flame and putting the tool to her lips. The heat turned the necessary drug into vapors that she inhaled once, then twice, three more inhales follows after that and she could feel her body lighten. She was sure she had risen upwards, higher and higher, and soon she’d be out of reach, in the air where her emotions couldn’t touch her— at least until the rapping at the door.

She breathed in deeply, a distraction like this could ruin the sleep that was soon to come, but she forced herself to stand and take slow steps to the door as she called out. “I’m sure you know what time it is— far too late for you to be at my door.”

His fingers curled into a tight fist, offering a quick sequence of knocks on the door. A part of him wished this wasn’t so horribly routine — dragging himself up to Claudia’s room yet again, his pockets a few bills too light. The rest of him had missed this game while they’d all been away, calmed by the familiarity of an old chase reignited. 

Truly, things were back to how they’d always been. The thought settled him, his lips settling into a comfortable line as she pulled herself to the door to greet him. A cloud of smoke wafted with the creak of the hinge; not the rich, robust smoke that filled the lounge, but a different smoke. A smoke that smelled awfully of short change and thin excuses. 

“Then let’s make this quick,” he snapped, and with a turn of his shoulders he slipped past her, letting himself into the girl’s room. Narrowed eyes glanced towards the pipe she held. He blinked once before setting eyes on the tired, dazed face she showed him. “Is that Vivienne’s money you’re smoking tonight?”

[gxuthier-blog]

He sat himself in a booth towards the back — far enough that the dancers’ legs wouldn’t entirely distract him from the ledger before him, but not so far that he couldn’t allow himself a peek up towards the stage when the pull got too strong. There was a dusty office in the back for him somewhere, but he’d barely spent a moment there since the re-opening. Why would he, when he could work just as well in the midst of the show? He’d missed the spectacle of it all. He’d missed the pulse. 

He'd missed feeling something.

It had been a cold six months, but as he scanned the numbers in the ledger he kept before him, the familiar scent of smoke clouding the room, he felt right again. The shadow cast over his book by a passing body caught him, and Marcel pulled his gaze up, slowly, steady, posing his question. “I don’t suppose you’re the reason we’re coming up short tonight?”

[tomellisarchive]

The Guest (2014, dir. Adam Wingard)