When The Music Stops/'The Emcee'
Was unsure whether to post this or not due to the meaning of the musical but I'll leave it here for now.
A/N: Implications/Brief mentions of Nazi's.
-(Male Reader)-
========
The room was a haze of smoke, curling tendrils of opium and cigarette ash wrapping themselves lazily around the dim light of a single flickering bulb. A gramophone wheezed out a scratchy melody, something mournful and defiant, the kind of music that could only exist in Berlin—a city teetering between brilliance and destruction. On a stained mattress in the corner of the room, 'The Emcee' reclined, his makeup smeared, his shirt half-open, revealing a gaunt frame that seemed almost unreal in its sharpness.
Unhealthy—if nothing more.
He was laughing softly, his voice a raspy echo of the performer who owned the stage at the Kit Kat Klub. But the laughter wasn’t entirely joyful; it had a sharpness to it, a kind of edge that dared the world to cut him deeper, dared it to tip him off the teeter.
Beside him, a man—a figure whose silhouette shifted like a shadow under candlelight—lit another cigarette, his hands steady despite the quiet tremor of their shared indulgence a mere few hours prior.
“You’re beautiful when you’re broken,” the man said, his tone flat but not unkind. It wasn’t a compliment, not really but it was neither an insult.
'The Emcee' tilted his head, the corners of his mouth curling into a sly smile. “Darling, I am always broken. That’s the trick, you see.” He plucked the cigarette from the man’s lips without asking, inhaling deeply before letting the smoke billow out in a long, theatrical sigh.
“Tell me, do you think they’ll come for us? The little men in their stuffy, brown uniforms?”
The man didn’t answer immediately. He laid back, staring at the cracked ceiling as though it held the secrets of the universe, or he was merely buying time or ignoring, a usual response for him. He wasn’t the type to offer comfort, and Emcee wasn’t the type to expect it.
They had an unspoken agreement: no lies, no pretense, no promises. They weren’t lovers, not in the way poets wrote about, but they weren’t strangers, either.
They had slipped into a strange rhythm, an intimacy born not of love but of survival, of shared moments stolen from a world that wanted to erase them both.
“Does it matter?” He finally replied.
“They’ll come for everyone eventually.”
'The Emcee' laughed again, this time louder, the sound bouncing off the walls like a broken melody.
“Oh, darling, you have such a gift for the macabre! You could take my job if you ever decided to trade in your... stoicism for a little flair.” He stretched out his legs, his stockinged feet brushing against the man’s.
“But no, you’re right. It doesn’t matter. The show must go on, ja?”
The man glanced at him then, his eyes unreadable. “Doesn’t scare you?”
“Everything scares me,” 'The Emcee' said softly, almost to himself. His voice dropped its performative edge, becoming something raw and vulnerable.
“The Jews, the queers, the misfits—we’re all standing on the same gallows, waiting for the rope to tighten. But you don’t survive by crying, meine Süße. You survive by laughing, by dancing, by drinking and... this.” He gestured vaguely to the crumpled sheets, the empty bottles, the scattered remnants of their last high across the room.
“You survive by pretending none of it matters until it doesn’t anymore.”
The man reached out, his hand brushing against 'The Emcee’s'. God, they didn’t even know each other's actual names, The man was given nothing but 'Emcee' to go off of, 'Master Of Ceremonies', fitting he must admit. While 'Emcee' never bothered inquiring about the man's name, sticking to loose, meaningless endearments, both in English and German.
It worked for the two, kept a nice distance between them and this arrangement of their's.
For a moment, they didn’t speak. There was no need to. Their silences were as eloquent as their conversations, filled with everything they couldn’t—or wouldn’t—say.
They didn’t talk about the future. 'The Emcee' wouldn’t let them. He lived in the moment, in the chaos, in the strange, fleeting comfort they found in each other’s arms. He didn’t ask where the man went when he left, and the man didn’t question why 'The Emcee’s' laughter sometimes turned into quiet sobs in the middle of the night.
“I should go,” the man murmured after what felt like hours.
“Yes, you should,” The Emcee replied, his voice light and teasing. But his fingers lingered on the man’s wrist, holding him in place for just a second longer. “Stay.”
It wasn’t a question, but it wasn’t quite a command, either. The man hesitated, then lay back down. 'The Emcee' smiled, triumphant but not smug, not yet anyway.
“Good boy.”
In the quiet that inevitably followed, the gramophone clicked off, leaving only the sound of their breathing and the faint hum of the city outside. Berlin was restless, caught between its hedonistic past and its ominous future. But in this small, smoke-filled room, the world could wait.
For now, they had each other. They would focus only on each other, when within these four decaying, yellowed walls. Not as lovers, not as friends, but as something fragile and fleeting, like the last note of a cabaret song lingering in the air before the curtain falls.
And for now, that was enough.
========
Just something I threw together tonight because I've been obsessed with the 1993 version of Cabaret lately.
Also the tiny bit of German is from Google translate, so god knows what it says vs what I meant 💀
Hope this was somewhat decent!