urbancate | RPF Fic: Mio Sogno, Mia Vita

Title: Mio Sogno, Mia Vita (My Dream, My Life)
Pairing: Karl/OFC
Rating: R-ish
Length: 900
Disclaimer: LIES, DIRTY ANGSTY LIES
Summary: Hollywood sucks? (I suck at summaries.)
Notes: Filled my own request for a Karl fic with the line "We meet in the strangest places". Title from aria "Chi il bel sogno di Doretta" from Puccini's La Rondine. Did I mention the angst? (Maybe I'm overstating the angst.)

Mio Sogno, Mia Vita

"We meet in the strangest places." It's a lie, or, at the very least a half-truth. They have never technically met. They have only seen each other across the room at maybe a dozen parties in the pre-awards-season glitterati circuit of Hollywood.

Tonight, though, he runs into her at the bar and submits to the sudden instinct to offer up a line like We meet in the strangest places as seriously as he can. He wants to her appreciate the irony.

He is rewarded by the lift of an eyebrow and the rake of her eyes as she lifts her glass - something clear and fizzy, gin and tonic or maybe just tonic - to take a slow slip.

"Oh, that's cute," she says rather drily, but with a smile.

Up close, in warm and real life color, she is spectacularly beautiful. That she is beautiful is something he already knows; he has seen her on stage. (On television, actually; he would not be caught dead at the opera.) That the power she exerts over an audience could be transmuted into making him feel like a supplicating teenager? That is something he did not know.

"I'll take cute. I do live to entertain. And maybe a chance to upgrade."

"But there's nothing better than cute." Even her speaking voice is a caress, warm and measured. She wields it like the weapon it is.

He knows why he is here, running the circuit; he is playing the game, cashing in on buzz (terrible, overused word). Why she is here? He thinks she has been dating a director. She certainly has no need of playing the graspy, ass-kissing game; her career is in New York and Europe, and singing for presidents, and it's a stellar career.

Los Angeles, with its traffic and smog and celebrities and parties, is making him cynical and he suddenly fucking hates it. Another party, another part to play.

"There are a million things better than cute," he replies with a careful and deliberate lift of one eyebrow. He knows it looks wicked. He clinks his glass lightly against hers and walks away.

The setting is different but the scene is the same and so are the players. He knows he is mired in this cynicism when he starts to think of everything in terms of theatrics and poses. He could even tell you that Starlet A is wearing Cavalli and Established Actress B is in Badgley Mishka. Because the dressing of the set is as important as anything when staging a scene. Or a party. It's the same thing.

The Diva arrives on the arm of the Director. She is both more ethereal and more present than any other woman here.

He carries on conversations, is entertaining and laughable and everything expected of the Kiwi hitting it big. But he is watching her, always watching. It makes him feel like a hawk. Or a mouse. He isn't sure. Because her eyes are on him, too.

They don't come within five feet of each other.

They don't speak.

He is smoking a cigar and her lips curl in distaste. It is cold. For Los Angeles. Which means it is hardly cold at all. But the thin-blooded masses are huddled inside all the same.

Her dress is black, with a touch of sparkle. He is tired of women in black. The women here are like crows.

There is a view, expansive, artificial stars blinking out the dark. Damn if he can ever tell where anything is in this place. The ocean is a mystery somewhere to the west. Home is somewhere further.

She puffs once on the cigar, leaving pale lipstick marks. When he takes it back he thinks that he has kissed her. He has marked the singer with his poisonous smoke.

She sings.

It is the first time he has heard her. It is the first time he has heard anything.

She looks right at him as she sings and breaks his fucking heart.

He leaves this party early.

The thing with the Director doesn't last. But she stays in Los Angeles. This is what he hears through the creeping vines in between parties.

He is in the corner and she is at the center. A great voluptuous butterfly among the crows. Rich, indulgent, forbidden.

It is not what he planned - he has stopped planning these sorts of things. They meet at the bar again.

"We meet," she says, and it pours through him like brandy.

"That's how these things start, you know."

"Is it?"

"Yes. People who meet in the strangest places. I read it somewhere."

"I think I saw that movie."

"I might have been in that movie. I can't remember."

She smiles and something slips - no, it just falls away, this is not accidental - and he sees her. "Perhaps we're already in the middle?"

"Perhaps," he agrees. While part of him thinks it is already the end.

No, it is the beginning and the end.

Naked, slick with sweat, she is not a diva and he is not an actor. They are only themselves. What any of this actually means is beyond him. That she sighs his name and begs and breaks his fucking heart, that is what matters.

That he sighs and begs and breaks her heart, that is secondary.