This is a gift for @lex-dermain who requested something with Nicolas. Happy holidays!
The playlist to go with the story can be found here:
I don't write as much as I should, but can you really blame me when our conversation has become so one-sided? I hope you can. I do.
Sometimes the words escape me as do the years, fleeting and yet oppressive all the same. I don't know if you would like me now. I have become both more and less myself. Sometimes the man that sought you out, the one who weeps for the witches, the one that spent all that time in that tiny room in the village, who ran away to Paris- honestly, he feels like a perfect stranger. But he does always return to Paris.
He also aims to please, even to a fault. Armand certainly sees it as my worst transgression. Vanity, he calls it. Perhaps it is vanity that I even write this letter, that I think my choices and faults impacted you so severely. That I still need to comfort myself with these letters that you'll never read.
I think you would say that all of this is very "me."
It is Christmas, and though I have Louis and so many others at my side, I miss you. I'm so rarely alone anymore. It is both a blessing and a curse to have the coven here. To lead.
Louis will be here soon to collect me. This is a night we keep for ourselves. I wonder if you would have gotten along. You are similar in faith, appearance, cynicism, but that is where the similarities die. He's always believed in good, in the way you were never able to see.
I have seen many things in the years since we've been together, but most of all I wish that I would have seen you. Just once. You were present in neither heaven nor hell. Perhaps you remain unseen on Earth, like Armand's Riccardo. Nicki, where are you? Would you even tell me if you could?
Whenever you are now, do you remember waking up to the sound of church bells? Our rooms in Paris were so small, but we were so happy to be in them. Can you still recall the gentle flickering light of the candles in our rooms? Do you miss my love for you and your music? Sometimes I wonder if you ever truly felt my love. You always thought us joined in sin. We were yes, but that is not all there was.
If happiness is a sin I will never repent.
What wears on me most is the lack of something concrete. I have my memories of you yes, but what else? Sometimes I wish that I had a grave to visit, and on my darker days that we had always been mortal men and nothing more. I'm not entirely sure you would have met a different end, but maybe we could have made it last. Had cheap wine and the magic of our conversation to keep us going and nothing more.
But we were always looking for something better, weren't we? The world could never be enough. We would never find Paris. I still haven't, after all these years. And yet I still fear the meaninglessness darkness that awaits us all.
"Lestat?" It was Louis, come to take me away to midnight mass. He was dressed for the cold we wouldn't feel, my own coat held against his chest.
"Coming," I said, rising to my feet. I caught myself feeling grateful that he could not hear my thoughts, and the guilt from this thought set in almost immediately after. " Forgive me, I lost track of the time."
"What were you writing? I hope it is not another one of your books." He was smiling to erase the sting. I took my coat from his arms but did not put it on.
"You're the one who started it. No, this time it is only a letter." I think I returned his smile.
"A Christmas miracle." His arms found their way around my neck, but he made no move to read what I had been writing. "What is it that troubles you?"
The contents of the letter were no secret; we had few, if any. But Louis always wanted to hear things directly from me. "The ghost of Christmas past," I said, only half joking.
Louis made a contemplative noise and set to dressing me once he realized I was in no state to do it myself. My thoughtful Louis. He slid my coat over my arms, winding a scarf around my neck to keep out the chill I wouldn't feel. The caricature of a winter stroll. I was Lelio again, about to perform for the masses. I shuddered. Louis was silent for a moment, carefully working a pair of leather gloves onto my fingers.
"Come back to the present with me." He took my gloved hand in his own to lead me from my rooms. No one stopped us as we left, a rare occasion. As we stepped out into the street, the noise of the city was briefly overwhelming. So much so that it filtered out the noise in my head. I closed my eyes, inhaling deeply. Roasting chestnuts, cold air, living people. When I opened them again, Louis was looking at me in the way he did when he thought I wasn't paying attention. Tonight we exist, together, in love, and that is enough for me.
