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The stars were scattered in a shimmering swath above me. Lying on my back as I was, with no canopy of branches to obscure it, the heavens seemed like a gaping void I might fall into if I didn’t anchor myself somehow.
“Don’t go tomorrow,” I said.
“Why not?” Nicki asked. His voice was a low murmur beneath the night sounds; crickets and the first few spring frogs.
I propped myself up on my elbows and looked at him. “Because I don’t want you to.”
He lowered his gaze from the stars and looked at me.
He was gilded in their light; his thick dark lashes and the long ridge of his nose and his full lips curved in a smile. A smile which stoked the embers of desire within me, sent the heat of it down into my thighs and up my neck to make a shameless display of my flushed face.
“Is that an order, my Lord?” he asked.
I laughed, to avoid embarrassing myself by making some other involuntary sound in response.
“If that is what it takes, then yes! I forbid you from going to confession tomorrow, Nicki.” I sat up fully. “Confess to me instead, here, tonight.” I gestured to the ruins of the monastery which surrounded us, shielded us from the breeze which still had the bite of winter to it. “This is a holy enough place, I should think.” I smiled down at him.
“Don’t be ridiculous,” he scoffed. Instinctively he reached for the wine bottle, remembered it was long since emptied, let it slip from his fingers and roll away.
“Come now, don’t be shy.” I hunched over and brought my hands up under my chin to worry at an invisible rosary. “Tell me of your sins, child,” I said, doing my very best impression of the ancient priest which served our village. “and I will decide if they require atonement.”
“He doesn’t decide, that’s not how it-”
“Go on, then, get on with it! I haven’t got all day. The good Lord could call me home any minute now!”
That made him laugh. Then he shook his head. Then he studied me a moment as the smile lingered, faded from his lips. His look grew serious enough that I broke character, sat up straight again and lowered my hands to weave my fingers together uncertainly in my lap.
“ Lie down,” he said.
“Wh-what?” I said as my cheeks burned.
“ He doesn’t stare you down through the screen, does he?” Nicki teased.
“Oh, right.”
“Lie down, stop looking at me, and we’ll do this properly.”
I obeyed.
“No, this isn’t- We should be next to each other. Come here.”
My heart beating within my chest felt like a songbird beating its wings against the cage, striving to be free. I moved back to my place beside him from before, when the enormity of the heavens had been the focus of my attention. Now, as I felt my velvet cloak shift beneath us with his movement, as the breeze sent a sudden powerful wave of his scent over me, as his soft sigh when he settled in made the hair on my arms stiffen; now every bit of my attention was focused on him.
He cleared his throat. He made the sign of the cross.
“Bless me Father for I have sinned,” he said.
I resumed my priest impression.
“Ah, yes. And did you also notice that the sky was blue today?”
He sighed.
“If you aren’t going to take this seriously then-”
“No, I’m sorry, please, go on,” I said through valiantly stifled laughter.
He lazily kicked at my boot before he continued.
“It has been three days since my last confession. These… these are my sins.”
In the pause which followed, the night sky began to regain its resemblance to an open maw. By the time Nicki spoke again I had a tense grip on a fistful of the cloak he had given me.
“I shirked my responsibilities, my duty to my father. I snuck away to play my violin and to see y- to see a friend, instead of helping father with his work.”
I relaxed a bit.
“This is not necessarily a sin, my child. Not if the father is cruel and overbearing. Not if the music you play is beautiful.” I stole a sideways glance at him. “Not if the friend gives you happiness and hope.”
Another pause. Another interminable increase of tension.
“I took a bottle of wine without permission, from my father. Well,” he tapped that night’s empty bottle with the toe of his boot. “Two bottles. I’ve wasted hours drinking I should have devoted to work or study.”
“Who says the hours were wasted?” I dropped the priest act and turned my head to look at him. “You spent them teaching; telling me everything about Paris, all the grand new ideas and philosophies being born there.”
He fixed me with a wry look before turning my eyes back to the stars with a hand on my cheek. I was struck by such a strong impulse to hold it there with my own that once again I was holding onto my cloak for dear life.
He kept his hands to himself as he said the next. He crossed his arms over his chest and held them there, as if he thought he could physically contain what he was about to say. Or perhaps he hoped it couldn’t come back to hurt him if he shut the door behind it.
“I… I have…”
The sigh he let out as he faltered was so ragged it made my own breath catch in my throat.
“What is it?” I whispered.
“I feel things,” he whispered back. “Things that I… shouldn’t feel, that…”
“There’s no such thing, Nicki. All feeling is natural, it isn’t good or bad, it’s-”
“How can you be so sure?” he hissed. “You talk as if you were ordained by God Himself, sent down to-”
“I wasn’t sent by anyone, don’t you see? That’s the beauty of it, I-”
“Let me finish. Please.”
I went quiet. I felt like the blood in my veins was electrified as it pulsed through me.
“I feel things for… for someone. Feelings I can’t do anything about. I can’t act on them, I can’t make them go away, I-”
I watched as he closed his eyes, tilted his head back in an arc which expressed his torment more eloquently than words ever could.
“I have… impure thoughts. I’ve… I’ve given in to them, in private.”
I couldn’t conceal the audible breath which left me then. Truthfully, I didn’t try to.
“When I try to ignore them they’re a constant distraction. They cloud and consume my mind until I give in to them again.” He was gripping the cloak between us now. “It’s a chain around my neck, my wrists. I am shackled by it.”
I licked my lips, swallowed; my mouth had gone suddenly dry.
“Perhaps… Perhaps the feelings themselves aren’t what shackles you.” I put my hand next to his on the velvet. “Look at them more closely, and I think you’ll find doubt and fear inscribed into the metal.”
He went still and quiet; still but for the unsteady rise and fall of his chest, quiet but for his subdued yet labored breaths.
“You’ve no need for either, Nicki,” I whispered as I brushed the back of my finger against his hand.
His hand shot up to make the sign of the cross again.
“What is my penance to be?”
“…Nicki.”
He squeezed his eyes shut again.
“O my God, I am heartily sorry for having offended Thee, and I detest all my sins, because I dread the loss of heaven and the pains of hell, but most of all because-”
I stared once more up into the glittering void as he finished reciting the Act of Contrition. He didn’t ask me to dismiss him with the traditional words of praise, for which I was grateful; I wasn’t in the mood for playacting any longer. I would have thanked God for it, but it didn’t seem appropriate given the circumstances.
I found myself at a loss.
He lapsed into silence after his prayer and then we simply… lay there. The moments passed by and stretched out into what must have been half an hour at least.
I know what you’re thinking.
But Lestat! Confident Lestat, courageous Lestat, Lestat who killed the wolves! Why didn’t you say something, convince him to say more, do something, anything!
The truth of the matter is, dear reader, that I was scared.
I was terrified.
Yes, I was sure of myself to a fault even back then, already had a few theatrical performances under my belt. Yes, I had been braving the ancient wilderness of my father’s lands since I was old enough to fire a flintlock without ending up sprawled on my back. And yes, I had killed the wolves. Nicki and I were lying atop their pelts to keep off the damp grass on the very night I’ve been describing to you.
But I’ll tell you a secret.
Nicolas instilled more fear in me than the toughest audience, than my father when he was drunk and still young and fit enough to chase me down, more fear even than the wolves had, as they slavered and snarled at me in the snow.
In those first few weeks of our friendship, before it had fully blossomed into something more, the thought of losing him or driving him away somehow was my very worst fear.
And so I did nothing. I said nothing. Eventually I fell asleep, though I don’t recall drifting off. What I do recall is waking up shivering; the evenings that time of year still brought quite a chill with them. I held more closely to Nicki, buried my face in the folds and ruffles of his loosened jabot before I fully realized.
I looked up cautiously, to find his eyes closed and his breathing peaceful. The cold sent a shudder through him and he tightened his arms around me in his sleep.
I could have cried.
I nearly did, but restrained myself to a mere welling up of the eyes and one last deep breath of him before I pulled away. He came to as I did so.
“Mmm, whadisit,” he mumbled.
“We fell asleep,” I said as I stood. “Come on, we need to go back. It isn’t warm enough yet to stay out all night.”
He took the hand I offered and I pulled him to his feet, gathered up and shook out my cloak before securing it over my shoulders and leading the way back down the steep and winding trail.
I could only stand a few minutes of listening to his chattering teeth before I spoke up.
“Come on,” I said, holding my cloak open with an outstretched arm.
He only hesitated a moment before he joined me under it for the rest of the walk home.
He told me he loved me before the week was out.