Basterds Fic: A Lust For Destruction (Hellstrom/Shosanna), PG-13
Title: A Lust For Destruction
Characters: Dieter Hellstrom, Shosanna Dreyfus, with mentions of Zoller, and Hellstrom/Shosanna undertones.
Rating: PG-13
Word Count: 1109
Warnings: Some swearing, sexual references, and dark themes. May also contain gratuitous smoking porn.
Summary: Dieter has long been fascinated by breaking things.
Disclaimer: Inglourious Basterds belongs to God Quentin Tarantino, I'm just borrowing the characters for the moment.
Notes: This ship seems to have burrowed it's way into my brain, and now that it has settled in, it refuses to leave. Mainly due to the fact that both August Diehl and Mélanie Laurent are far too pretty for me not to ship them together. *facepalm*
A Lust For Destruction
Dieter sees her, staring at him from the top of the ladder, and arches a brow in surprise. This one’s a bit plain for the likes of Zoller. He usually goes for the showy Parisian types, all tarted up in expensive silks and far too much make up. This one’s almost ordinary. He shouts out her name in a questioning tone, and when she replies with the affirmative, he tells the driver to enquire about the ownership of the cinema. He never bothers speaking French with the Parisians. They aren’t worth the bother, and you often find out the most interesting details when they think that you can’t understand them. He hears her reply, then instructs the driver to tell her to come down.
He rolls his eyes as she takes her sweet time to scale the ladder. Pathetic. Fucking Zoller. Kills a couple of hundred people in Italy, and suddenly he’s a national hero with his own personal errand boy. The sheer concept that he has been reduced to little more than someone to chase after Zoller’s conquests sickens him. She reaches the bottom of the ladder, and walks over.
Now, that’s interesting. She’s actually looking into his eyes while she speaks. “I don’t understand. What have I done?” No slight tremor, no nervous avoidance of looking at him. It’s almost like he doesn’t faze her in the slightest.
“Get your ass in that car.” She complies, but there is still no fear. He realises why Zoller is having difficulty snaring this one. She has far too much backbone for the likes of the snivelling Private. Even when he gently shoves against the small of her back, she barely responds. He finds his interest in this Emmanuelle increase in spite of himself.
***
Dieter has always found that you learn much more by watching than by listening. Words are little more than empty lies, conveyors of whatever the speaker thinks you want to hear, and yet the body can reveal the entire truth before a sentence is even uttered. He doesn’t say a word as the sedan drives them through the streets of Paris, he just observes. Stolen glances at the way she holds her head, the way her hands cling together in her lap, the almost unnatural straightness of her posture. Emmanuelle wants him to think that the situation isn’t bothering her, that his presence doesn’t faze her in the slightest. He knows better than to think that.
***
If there was one thing he has never been able to stand, it’s tedium. It’s being forced to sit through monotonous sermons as a child, it’s being sent to his bedroom after his mother whips him for making his little sister eat a teaspoon of pepper. (It wasn’t his fault that she was too much of an idiot to realise that there was no such thing as grey sugar.) It’s sitting in this over-priced café with a cigarette hanging from his mouth, not speaking unless he is being spoken to.
When he’s bored, his mind begins to wander, to latch on to anything that could provide even the slightest entertainment value. It stops his from fiddling with his hands, stops him from tapping songs from the great composers against the nearest surface, stops him from revealing a potential weakness. So, naturally, he can’t help but notice her out of the corner of his eye, watching as he brings the lighter to end of his cigarette, setting it alight. He tilts his head back, sucking down nicotine before exhaling the smoke. Any interest she shows in Zoller is due to mere politeness. Her disinterest in the events unfolding is rivalled only by his own. He knows that both of them would much rather be somewhere else, and as he watches while she straightens in her seat, while fingers remain tangled together in her lap, he can’t help but think that this elusive somewhere else could be a darkened room in her precious cinema, with her bent over a desk, tears prickling in her eyes.
***
The click of metal scraping against metal. The dull orange flame. He can’t help but shiver, and regrets the momentary lapse of memory when he walked out of his apartment without his coat. A dull streetlight flickers before burning out, and he stands on the corner of the street, inhaling tobacco in to his lungs, waiting. A light shines out from a window above him, and he lifts his head. A dark shape, silhouetted against artificial brightness. He knows that she is watching him, and he can only return the favour. They both stand still, looking at each other. She could turn away, she could pull a curtain across, but she doesn’t. He lets the cigarette drop to the ground, smothering the dying orange light into the footpath. He walks away before she gets the chance to.
***
When he was a child, he was always rather clumsy. Dropping cups of tea on to his Aunt Frida’s lap, breaking his arm while pretending to fly far beyond the confines of his family’s small, shitty farm. He used to feel ashamed whenever it happened, used to hide in fear that his mother would be in one of her bad moods when she found out. As he grew older though, the fear of breaking things wasn’t as strong. There was a sort of peculiar beauty in a shattered plate or a broken wrist, in letting something shatter into a million pieces and the chaos that unfolds. Things become infinitely more interesting after they have been destroyed.
Glances stolen across the lobby, as swastika flags are erected around them. Her eyes land upon him, and she always averts her gaze just before he can catch her eye. When he looks at her, he doesn’t stop. They circle each other from a distance, separated by a sea of activity. It’s not until later, a momentary slip of Zoller’s lovelorn gaze, when he approaches her. “Cigarette?” A curt smile, a small nod of her head, and he slips one between her fingers. She places it between her lips, and he lifts his lighter to meet it.
Idle chit chat was never his strength, so they stand in silence, surveying the circus unfolding around them. He turns his head and watches the slight re-adjustment of her shoulders, her mouth caressing the cigarette. The cold mask of indifference just manages to disguise her discomfort from the untrained eye, but Dieter’s gaze is far more skilled to be fooled. She’s beginning to let her mask slip, but it isn’t enough. He wants the masquerade to fall to pieces and he wants to see the pieces fall into the dirt.
Characters: Dieter Hellstrom, Shosanna Dreyfus, with mentions of Zoller, and Hellstrom/Shosanna undertones.
Rating: PG-13
Word Count: 1109
Warnings: Some swearing, sexual references, and dark themes. May also contain gratuitous smoking porn.
Summary: Dieter has long been fascinated by breaking things.
Disclaimer: Inglourious Basterds belongs to God Quentin Tarantino, I'm just borrowing the characters for the moment.
Notes: This ship seems to have burrowed it's way into my brain, and now that it has settled in, it refuses to leave. Mainly due to the fact that both August Diehl and Mélanie Laurent are far too pretty for me not to ship them together. *facepalm*
A Lust For Destruction
Dieter sees her, staring at him from the top of the ladder, and arches a brow in surprise. This one’s a bit plain for the likes of Zoller. He usually goes for the showy Parisian types, all tarted up in expensive silks and far too much make up. This one’s almost ordinary. He shouts out her name in a questioning tone, and when she replies with the affirmative, he tells the driver to enquire about the ownership of the cinema. He never bothers speaking French with the Parisians. They aren’t worth the bother, and you often find out the most interesting details when they think that you can’t understand them. He hears her reply, then instructs the driver to tell her to come down.
He rolls his eyes as she takes her sweet time to scale the ladder. Pathetic. Fucking Zoller. Kills a couple of hundred people in Italy, and suddenly he’s a national hero with his own personal errand boy. The sheer concept that he has been reduced to little more than someone to chase after Zoller’s conquests sickens him. She reaches the bottom of the ladder, and walks over.
Now, that’s interesting. She’s actually looking into his eyes while she speaks. “I don’t understand. What have I done?” No slight tremor, no nervous avoidance of looking at him. It’s almost like he doesn’t faze her in the slightest.
“Get your ass in that car.” She complies, but there is still no fear. He realises why Zoller is having difficulty snaring this one. She has far too much backbone for the likes of the snivelling Private. Even when he gently shoves against the small of her back, she barely responds. He finds his interest in this Emmanuelle increase in spite of himself.
***
Dieter has always found that you learn much more by watching than by listening. Words are little more than empty lies, conveyors of whatever the speaker thinks you want to hear, and yet the body can reveal the entire truth before a sentence is even uttered. He doesn’t say a word as the sedan drives them through the streets of Paris, he just observes. Stolen glances at the way she holds her head, the way her hands cling together in her lap, the almost unnatural straightness of her posture. Emmanuelle wants him to think that the situation isn’t bothering her, that his presence doesn’t faze her in the slightest. He knows better than to think that.
***
If there was one thing he has never been able to stand, it’s tedium. It’s being forced to sit through monotonous sermons as a child, it’s being sent to his bedroom after his mother whips him for making his little sister eat a teaspoon of pepper. (It wasn’t his fault that she was too much of an idiot to realise that there was no such thing as grey sugar.) It’s sitting in this over-priced café with a cigarette hanging from his mouth, not speaking unless he is being spoken to.
When he’s bored, his mind begins to wander, to latch on to anything that could provide even the slightest entertainment value. It stops his from fiddling with his hands, stops him from tapping songs from the great composers against the nearest surface, stops him from revealing a potential weakness. So, naturally, he can’t help but notice her out of the corner of his eye, watching as he brings the lighter to end of his cigarette, setting it alight. He tilts his head back, sucking down nicotine before exhaling the smoke. Any interest she shows in Zoller is due to mere politeness. Her disinterest in the events unfolding is rivalled only by his own. He knows that both of them would much rather be somewhere else, and as he watches while she straightens in her seat, while fingers remain tangled together in her lap, he can’t help but think that this elusive somewhere else could be a darkened room in her precious cinema, with her bent over a desk, tears prickling in her eyes.
***
The click of metal scraping against metal. The dull orange flame. He can’t help but shiver, and regrets the momentary lapse of memory when he walked out of his apartment without his coat. A dull streetlight flickers before burning out, and he stands on the corner of the street, inhaling tobacco in to his lungs, waiting. A light shines out from a window above him, and he lifts his head. A dark shape, silhouetted against artificial brightness. He knows that she is watching him, and he can only return the favour. They both stand still, looking at each other. She could turn away, she could pull a curtain across, but she doesn’t. He lets the cigarette drop to the ground, smothering the dying orange light into the footpath. He walks away before she gets the chance to.
***
When he was a child, he was always rather clumsy. Dropping cups of tea on to his Aunt Frida’s lap, breaking his arm while pretending to fly far beyond the confines of his family’s small, shitty farm. He used to feel ashamed whenever it happened, used to hide in fear that his mother would be in one of her bad moods when she found out. As he grew older though, the fear of breaking things wasn’t as strong. There was a sort of peculiar beauty in a shattered plate or a broken wrist, in letting something shatter into a million pieces and the chaos that unfolds. Things become infinitely more interesting after they have been destroyed.
Glances stolen across the lobby, as swastika flags are erected around them. Her eyes land upon him, and she always averts her gaze just before he can catch her eye. When he looks at her, he doesn’t stop. They circle each other from a distance, separated by a sea of activity. It’s not until later, a momentary slip of Zoller’s lovelorn gaze, when he approaches her. “Cigarette?” A curt smile, a small nod of her head, and he slips one between her fingers. She places it between her lips, and he lifts his lighter to meet it.
Idle chit chat was never his strength, so they stand in silence, surveying the circus unfolding around them. He turns his head and watches the slight re-adjustment of her shoulders, her mouth caressing the cigarette. The cold mask of indifference just manages to disguise her discomfort from the untrained eye, but Dieter’s gaze is far more skilled to be fooled. She’s beginning to let her mask slip, but it isn’t enough. He wants the masquerade to fall to pieces and he wants to see the pieces fall into the dirt.