Archive of Our Own

"Louis! Quick, which one of these coats should I pack, the burgundy or the merlot?"

"Which one is which? I'm afraid I'm no longer an expert on wine."

"Don't be a prick, chéri." Lestat stood in the bedroom of their suite amidst a battleground of fallen designer clothes, holding up two frock coats that were at first glance almost identical. "I left my good one back in New Orleans," he sighed, and threw both onto the bed in a heap.

"They're all beautiful," Louis soothed, moving to the bed and smoothing Lestat's clothes flat so they wouldn't wrinkle. "You think so, or you wouldn't have bought them."

"Yes, well, I asked what you think, didn't I?"

"Hmm. So you did."

Louis paused to consider them both, and he realized they were indeed very different: the buttons, the cut, even the way the velvet reflected the light. Bespoke, certainly, but meant to look antique in the most timeless and modern sort of way. He ran his fingertips over the lapels of one and then the other, imagining how each one would feel with Lestat filling it out, with his heartbeat thrumming through the soft material.

"I like the darker one. The cameo buttons are very you, as they say." Louis turned to Lestat, smiling softly. "Do they still say that? Very you?"

"I don't know," said Lestat, leaning with crossed arms against the wall. "I'm the one who's been indisposed for half a decade."

Vicious guilt wrapped its cold hands around Louis's throat.

"I'm sorry," Louis said, fingers knotting. "I didn't mean—"

"Anyway," Lestat waved a hand as if to swat the apology out of the air, so abrupt it was startling, "maybe I ought to go with that blue one instead. Red is practically cliché this time of year. Besides, Marius will be there, and he talks about the color like he invented it. Did you see he nearly accused me of stealing his look in that damned book of his? No, let him be a beardless Père Noël, I need something unexpected!"

Louis took a seat on the edge of the bed, letting Lestat go on his tirade uninterrupted. The abrupt reminder of Lestat's too-recent coma had rattled him badly, and he was glad for the opportunity to change the subject — though really, the topic of packing was itself a distraction.

It wasn't really about the clothes. Louis knew that, of course. Lestat would always be a dandy, but there were things that mattered and there were things that mattered, and Lestat was an old expert in hiding one within the other. It was only because Louis knew him so intimately that he could see through the act.

A handful of familiar blood drinkers had gathered in Manhattan, and there was word that more were on their way. It was the end of the millennium, and New York City seemed to be the very beating heart of the modern world. The actual Christmas holiday was an afterthought; how many of them had believed in the Christian God even when they were mortal? But the New Year would come soon, and a gathering of their kind was inevitable, if only for the symbolism of it all.

Exhausting, thought Louis, but of course Lestat felt that he simply had to make an appearance. It wasn't that he wanted to (he hadn't said that once, and Louis had been waiting to hear it) but rather he kept blustering about and making a show of planning every excessive and pointless detail, as if he had something he desperately needed to prove.

He was carefully restoring a version of the Vampire Lestat from the pages of his early novels, courageous and brash and unassailable.

It was performance art.

Louis crossed one leg over the other and folded his hands on his knee. You could surprise them by not going at all, he wanted to say.

There was a purely selfish note of jealousy to it, but Louis had always been that way when it came to sharing Lestat with the rest of the world. Admitting it out loud would have been impossible, and acting on it utterly unthinkable. Lestat would never have let him live it down for the rest of his eternal life. But once Louis had identified the feeling for what it was, he'd followed it back through the years, and indeed it had resided in him since the very beginning: a hot little sting of something that burned in his breast when all eyes were on Lestat.

He could ignore it well enough when it was only insecurity. But when he thought of the way they would look at Lestat now, it made his blood quietly boil.

When Lestat had returned from his journey through Heaven and Hell, they had treated him like he was mad. They'd kept him in chains on the floor like a prisoner. They hadn't come to read to him. They'd never brushed the dust from his hair. They hadn't let him keep one tiny scrap of dignity. And Louis was too weak, they'd said, too weak to be responsible for him if he went mad out in the world. Too weak to do what would need to be done.

Louis hadn't forgiven it yet.

They'd freed him, finally, but by then he was too lost to be a danger to anyone. Music roused him now and then, but after a year, even that had stopped. He stopped changing his clothes on his own, but on those nights when he drifted into their Rue Royale flat like a ghost, he would allow Louis to carefully undress him and comb out his pale golden curls and put him in fresh velvet and linen and lace so that he would look splendid again. No one else could get close to the sleeping Lestat, but he would let Louis touch him like that.

The eldest had kept their vigils for a time, but one by one they took their leave. Unfamiliar blood drinkers wandered by less and less, until they no longer prowled the chapel grounds like jackals. Armand had taken his fledglings and his visions of Heaven and gone far away, back to the soaring heights of New York City skyscrapers. Even David had strayed now and then, flying once to Paris to speak with Pandora; Lestat was beyond his help and his reach, he had said.

Only Louis had stayed, month by month, year by year, never leaving the city, visiting Lestat in his chapel each night, conducting his hopeless devotions to the only god he still believed in.

And Lestat might have been sleeping still, had Louis not in a moment of miserable weakness attempted to leave him behind.

But he was dwelling in the past, and he didn't want to be, not with Lestat so vibrant and lively and undeniably here, pacing the hotel room with his long, feline strides. His loose hair was the white-golden color of sunlight, and his handsome face was exquisitely animated as he described the unforgivable gaps in his traveling wardrobe.

I love you, Louis thought, cradling the feeling close to his heart. I love your vanity, and your complaining, and your theatrics, and how you can't stand to hold still. I've missed you so much. I've spent my whole immortal life longing for you in some way. I can't bear the thought of living in a world without you in it. And when I prayed, I think I prayed to you.

Louis took a breath, slow and deep, and smoothed his hands over the bedclothes.

"Will you come on a walk with me, Lestat?" Louis asked. "It's early, the shops are still open."

Lestat stopped in his tracks, regarding Louis with a mixture of disbelief and delight. "Did my perfect ears hear that right? Did you actually say that you want to go shopping with me?"

"I enjoy spending time with you enough that I can bear it for a while," said Louis with a little shrug. But his smile was soft and self-deprecating, and Lestat seemed to take it for the almost-joke that it was. "And I like looking at the lights."

They bundled up in winter coats they didn't need, Lestat in his beloved crimson (the one with the cameos Louis had liked) and Louis in his favorite well-worn black wool. It was a decade out of style, and slightly threadbare in places, but it was comfortable, and he had so far resisted all of Lestat's attempts to replace it for him. In fact Lestat had bought it for him in the first place on that night he'd flown them to London almost fifteen years ago, though he'd most likely forgotten it by now.

It was snowing the most picturesque of mid-December snows, the kind that never fell in New Orleans. Louis had been almost a century old when he had first seen snow upon the ground, but it had been the harsh dark winter of eastern Europe, foreboding white-streaked mountains glimpsed through the window of the great black carriage he shared with Claudia.

"I've never really gotten used to it," Louis said as they strolled through the tree-lined park, tipping his head up to watch snowflakes fall from the darkened sky. City lights cast a faint orange glow on the clouds, and Louis couldn't make up his mind whether it was beautiful or not.

"Used to what, the snow?" Lestat grinned, hands stuffed into the pockets of his coat, so close that their elbows brushed now and then. "Well, that's the irrepressible Creole in you, my precious hothouse flower."

Louis huffed. "It's beautiful now, but tomorrow all this will be grey and brown slush sinking into your shoes."

"You don't like it at all? Not any of it?"

"I would rather be home," Louis said.

Lestat fell silent. It was quiet enough that they could hear Louis's footsteps: the crush of snow against asphalt, softer than a mortal but more human than any other vampire. Traffic ambled up the street outside the gates of the park, but the rumble of engines was muffled by snow-laden trees.

"We could go," said Lestat. He seemed roused by the idea, as if it was an engine gathering steam inside him. "I mean, just for a little while, just for Christmas. We could do that."

"Could we?" Louis felt a sudden painful stab of hope. "For a week, even less… We could walk the River Road and see the Christmas bonfires."

"And see the French Quarter all done up in lights the way I love, and go to Midnight Mass the way you love, and sit in a cafe somewhere watching tourists fall in love with the city and with each other and with the world." Lestat heaved a great sigh of frustration. "Ah, damn it all! We ought to be there right now!"

Guilt silenced Louis. The fact that they weren't there right now was entirely his fault.

They'd left New Orleans in early summer, after Louis's tragic blunder with Merrick had drawn the ire of the Talamasca. By autumn, Merrick and David had left them for Indonesia, where Maharet kept a compound filled with all the secrets of the ancient world. They were all four of them safer this way, Louis reasoned, though his concern was truly for Lestat alone.

Perhaps he ought to have worried for Merrick. Perhaps he did, in some distant way, but it was hard to feel anything but shame when he thought of her — the same revulsion that he'd felt toward the creation of his fledgling Madeleine. Their parting had been a relief in the end.

David had written a memoir about most of it. That was his right, though Louis failed to see the entertainment value in any of it, and he couldn't imagine what lesson might be learned from his tragic mistakes. He had received an advance copy in the mail, and deposited the manuscript unopened into the nearest trash compactor chute.

Since then, Louis had traveled with Lestat: a week in one city, three nights in the next, drifting from one urban center to another without any planning ahead. There were no more trips to the jungles of Central America, and if Lestat missed those hot, dreadful nights in mosquito-filled tropical hell, then he never let on. Instead, each change of scenery was a fresh chance to whisk Louis out to an art gallery or a symphony or even just an ordinary movie house, and Louis had the sense that Lestat was once again desperate to make up for those years of lost time. And if it was exhausting now and then for Louis to be always on the move, it only took a moment's glance at Lestat's summer-blue eyes for all his weariness to wash away.

Wherever he'd gone all those years, inside himself or somewhere else, Lestat seemed to be back with him now.

"It won't always be like this," Louis told Lestat. "You'll outlast them."

He felt a sudden longing to take Lestat's arm while they walked, the way they used to long ago in New Orleans. There was no one near enough to see it, he could reach out and…

"Anyway," said Lestat, waving a hand in the air in a gesture of affected nonchalance, "Armand thinks we'll be in New York by Christmas Eve, so it's already settled. There's no going back on it now, we've made plans."

You are a better actor than this, Louis thought.

He knew it was unwise, but he pressed: "Then you want to spend Christmas with Armand?"

"Damn it, don't say it like that! Do you always have to twist my words around?" Agitated, Lestat ran a hand through his hair. "He'll be expecting us, that's what I mean."

And there it was.

"Do his expectations of you matter suddenly?"

"Where are all of these questions coming from? You agreed to this a week ago, remember!"

"I never objected," said Louis, "but you never gave me a choice."

"Stay behind, then! Go back to New Orleans yourself! You talk like I've abducted you, but you can leave just like the others did! If you're so damned unhappy, why are you here?"

Louis's cheeks hummed with a phantom blush. He balled his hands into fists, the soft leather creaking silently against his palm, and he sped up his pace to leave Lestat behind him on the trail. It was petulant and contradictory, and the small flare of satisfaction from storming off immediately burned itself out into a cinder of exhausted disappointment.

There was a small footbridge ahead, and Louis stopped there, pressing his palms into the snow-covered stone railing and looking down into the blackness of the frozen stream. He breathed in deep. Below him, leaves decayed beneath the ice.

A minute passed, perhaps less, before Lestat caught up to him.

He moved silently, tracklessly, never disturbing the snow underfoot. But Louis felt his presence all the same, the overpowering nearness of him that rendered all else meaningless.

"You shouldn't go back on your own," said Lestat's voice behind him.

"You're the one who suggested I do that," Louis reminded him, but there was no malice in his voice. It was so easy to forgive Lestat, so effortless to absolve him of everything now that Louis understood him. He sighed silently. "No one has any quarrel with me, Lestat."

"What makes you so sure?"

"If someone wanted me, they would have come for me. But they don't really care who I am, even now. I'm the one who brought this down upon us, and yet you take the blame for everything." Louis took a breath. "You should be there. I'm sorry."

"It wasn't your fault," said Lestat. Louis felt him draw nearer, felt himself quicken with irrational temptation at the simple yet earth-shattering fact of his closeness.

"But it was. She chose me for my weakness." Louis shook his head, and made a swift one-handed gesture to cut the idea off at its base. "I don't intend to go there on my own. If your wish is to spend Christmas in New York with the others, I'll come along with you, of course. Unless you've grown tired of my company, in which case I ask that you please kindly spare me the typical long drawn-out torment and send me away."

He hadn't meant to say all that. The words had tumbled out of him of their own volition, his soft voice trembling with restrained emotion. It stung bitterly that Lestat could steal him from the void of death itself and still misunderstand him so.

"For the love of — Louis." Lestat tugged at his shoulder until Louis turned to look at him. He was frowning, as contrite as Louis had ever seen him, and there was an anxiety to the way he shifted his weight. He let out a cloudless sigh, and tenderly brushed the snow from Louis's hair.

"I can get us tickets to the ballet," murmured Lestat, his voice as soft as his velvet jacket. "I'll take you to all the museums. Pick any play you want. Hell, make it the opera. We'll go."

It was an attempt at an apology, Louis could tell. A peace offering of all of the things Lestat thought Louis loved. And he was missing the point.

"We won't have time for that," Louis said, folding his arms against the cold, moving closer to Lestat as he did. "Not with everyone there asking questions of you — and of me, certainly, though I'd rather say nothing at all."

That bothered Lestat. "Say nothing, then. You don't owe anyone an explanation."

"I know that, of course, but when has tact stopped any blood drinker from seeking answers?" Louis frowned deeply, looking down at Lestat's lovely cameo buttons while he composed himself. Those iridescent eyes were pools to lose his reason in.

How protective he felt toward Lestat, and how utterly useless that was in the grand scheme of things. No, Lestat would go to New York because he felt he had to show himself he could, and he would be battered by questions and memories and expectations, and there was no dissuading him from any of that if he had truly set his course. It was almost comical that Lestat had described Louis as his conscience, when he seemed so determined to ignore his every advice.

The snow was coming down harder, gathering on Lestat's shoulders and hair without melting. It fell with a sound that was quiet but somehow insistent, the faint crystalline crackling of ice meeting itself.

"Let's not stand here any longer," Louis said.

"Are you cold?" Lestat's tone wasn't mocking, only concerned.

Louis shook his head. "I just don't want to argue out here."

"All right," said Lestat, in a voice so gentle Louis would have wept to hear it once. "We'll argue later."

Lestat gathered him close with an arm around his shoulders, and they resumed their stroll toward the lights of the downtown shopping district. Louis allowed him to keep it there, warmed somehow by the weight of it, for as long as their walk would permit.

It wasn't long, unfortunately. The park gates dropped them right onto a busy city sidewalk, and Lestat withdrew his arm from Louis's shoulders to accommodate the tide of mortal shoppers. Louis stayed by Lestat's side like a shadow, and being near him made the crowd and noise and chaos almost tolerable.

They meandered with no particular destination in mind, marveling at the elaborate Christmas displays in shop windows, all the while arguing good-naturedly about the commodification of the holiday and what it did or did not render meaningless.

"I won't deny the skill involved," Louis admitted, peering through a jewelry store window at a crystal-encrusted snowman that glittered so brightly it made his eyes hurt. "I just think it's all terribly gaudy."

"I have no idea what you're talking about, chéri," Lestat said, barely repressing a laugh. He pointed so Louis would follow his line of sight.

Just across the street, in another lit-up window, was a ten foot tall "tree" built entirely out of stainless steel cookware and luxury knives. An apron-clad Santa Claus beamed at a natural gas barbecue grill.

Louis groaned.

Lestat's snickering threatened to turn into a full-blown laughing fit. Louis felt a familiar mix of both overwhelming fondness and phenomenal exasperation, and with his hand through the crook of Lestat's arm, he pulled him along.

Millions of lights, strung up and hung upon every conceivable surface, twining around lampposts and dangling from awnings like electric icicles. Lights shaped like trees and sleighs and bells and candy canes, lights spelling out the names of stores. White lights, gold lights, lights in every color of the rainbow. Lights in the shape of stars.

They stopped at a crosswalk to let a taxi pass, then marched across the slush-filled street toward the front doors of Montgomery Ward. Atop the steel awning loomed a golden statue of a reindeer in repose, its globe of a nose blinking red twenty feet in the air like the light on an air traffic control tower.

"You hate it so much," laughed Lestat. "Oh, you should see your face!"

He could in fact see his own scowl reflected in Lestat's ridiculous silver sunglasses.

"There was a scandal with a golden calf," Louis muttered. "Perhaps you've heard of it."

"Such disrespect," chided Lestat. "That sweet little deer saved Christmas! His statue should be three stories higher, at least." They swept through the automatic doors and into blissful artificial heat. "We should be lighting candles and saying prayers in his name. Saint Rudolph, we humbly ask that you light our path to true holiness, that we may be worthy of Santa's grace. Amen."

"All right," Louis said, finally cracking a smile, "that's enough. I don't want us to get on the subject of martyring reindeer."

"Oh, but I do." Lestat grinned, and Louis's heart thrilled at the sight of a pointed white fang. "I love getting blasphemous with you."

The department store was not a place that either Louis or Lestat would ordinarily have shopped, which was what made it particularly captivating. Lestat enjoyed this sort of thing, swimming like a well-dressed shark through a store that was well below his typical budget, delighting in the pure excess of late-century American capitalism.

The shoes, watches, and clothes were of little interest to Lestat, of course. He would never be caught dead, in his own words, in something off the rack. Louis simply found most modern fashions drab and unappealing; he preferred his own wardrobe of comfortable black, always unremarkably at least a decade out of date.

A bank of escalators loomed before them, with signage indicating which floor was home to each department. Men's and women's clothing with a floor designated for each. Appliances, sporting goods, houseware, hardware, electronics, cosmetics, books, and more. On the very top floor was children's clothing, toys, and Santa's Workshop.

Lestat cast a brief glance at the sign, then gestured for Louis to follow him onto the escalator. Louis stood two steps behind Lestat as they ascended, admiring the casually artful way he stood, one long leg bent at the knee, elbow perched upon the guardrail, handsome face pointed toward the neon lights of the electronics department.

He caught whispers of mortal thoughts as they passed, all caught up in their own narrow yet infinite worlds, thinking of a thousand things, and none of them paying any attention to the two unearthly creatures in their midst. Now and then someone cast a lingering glance toward Lestat, but it was only because he was strikingly handsome and undeniably pleasant to look upon.

As for the dark shadow at Lestat's side? If anyone noticed his snow-white skin and too-bright eyes, they thought nothing of it at all.

They stepped off the escalator on the third floor. A crowd was gathered near a display of several large television screens, immersed in what appeared to be an interactive game. Past them were aisles of computers, cameras, and new gadgets that Louis hadn't bothered understanding yet.

Shameless modern excess.

"Are we here for something in particular?" Louis asked. The flashing lights made his head ache in a very mortal way, and the crowds here were worse than they had been downstairs.

"Not at all," said Lestat. "Though now that I'm thinking of it, I do need a new laptop."

"You aren't planning on writing a book?"

"I never plan on writing a book, they just happen to me. But no, I just want one. I like them. They're fun."

"You'll need a new email address, I suppose."

"You can do that for me."

"Oh, can I?"

"You will. You know you will. You always do those little things I need."

They wandered through a sea of candy-colored Macintosh computers.

"Louis?"

"Yes?"

"You don't really think everything will break down on New Year's Eve, do you? That technological apocalypse everyone's gone so crazy about…"

"Of course it won't," Louis assured him, a little surprised.

"That's what my agent said. My banker too. But they say what I pay them to say — or rather, they make most of their money off my confidence in their ability to safeguard my considerable wealth."

"You sound as if you didn't believe them."

Lestat shrugged his shoulders. "I'd sooner trust your advice on the end of the world."

"I'm flattered," said Louis.

"You should be."

"Is that why you want me with you in New York? In case it's the end of the world?"

Lestat looked at Louis strangely, his head tipped slightly to one side. His white hair fell against his shoulder, and Louis fought the urge to brush it back. They were in public, surrounded by mortals, but Lestat loomed so large in Louis's vision that none of it seemed truly real.

"Would you be there with me if it was?"

Louis felt a blush prickling his cheeks, though he hadn't fed recently enough for it to show. Was Lestat teasing him, or did he really want to know? If he answered with a true, resounding yes, would Lestat laugh? Or did he actually want Louis at his side?

He'd hesitated too long. A mother pushed by with three children in tow, jostling Louis with her armful of shopping bags and forcing him to step back. His shoulder bumped an end shelf, toppling a box of novelty ornaments, but Lestat caught it before it could crash to the floor.

"Thank you," said Louis, heart pounding with a disorienting mix of relief and agitation.

"You all right?" Lestat's hand was a brief but reassuring pressure between Louis's shoulderblades.

"I knew what I was getting into," answered Louis, smiling thinly.

He would have felt better if he could have looked Lestat in the eyes. Those absurd sunglasses that he insisted upon only reflected Louis's own anxieties back at him. And Lestat was just looking at him with an expression Louis couldn't decipher, brows slightly pinched, lips poised as if there was something he wanted to say.

Then Lestat's entire body shrugged without moving his hands, and the moment passed.

"Come on, then," Lestat said, "this way."

Lestat had spotted the electronic keyboards. Weaving past mortal shoppers with his long, bounding strides, he pounced upon the most expensive model on the floor. Louis followed with arms folded across his chest, hoping to find a way to take up less space.

Lestat ran his fingers over the plastic keys, his lips curled in a delighted smile. He pulled his leather gloves off, shoved them into his coat pockets, and did the same again. He played a few silent keys, frowned, then finally found the large red POWER button in the top left corner.

"There you are," Lestat purred. "Now let's hear you."

Lestat's long, clever fingers danced across the keys, and the artificial voice of the electronic piano sang forth from expensive display speakers.

Louis recognized the fluttering melody instantly. It was the Waltz of the Flowers.

Did Lestat know he loved Tchaikovsky? He'd taken Louis to Sleeping Beauty once, but they'd fought on the walk back — about what, Louis couldn't remember — and they'd never talked about it.

But for months afterward, anytime Louis would visit his flat, Lestat would be playing that record.

In retrospect, it did seem obvious.

A small crowd was gathering, murmuring to one another in awe as they watched Lestat play. Louis drifted courteously back to make room, making himself as small and unobtrusive as he could at his nearly six feet of height, and several rows of people crowded immediately in between him and Lestat.

His view now thoroughly blocked, Louis turned to examine a nearby shelf of Christmas CDs with intense disinterest.

Everything felt suddenly overwhelming and garish and tiresome. The fluorescent lights were too bright, the electronics were so very loud, and the crush of humanity was a constant reminder that he was not human at all. He longed to be home, listening to the steady drumbeat of the Louisiana rain falling on the banana trees in his courtyard, a fire roaring in the hearth as he read Charles Dickens to Lestat.

He wandered, knowing that Lestat would find him after he grew tired of the adulation. This floor was far too loud for Louis's current mood, and there was nothing here to interest him tonight.

He took the nearest escalator up, not caring where it led so long as it offered an escape from the chaos of a hundred blaring television sets.

A tinny melody droned from the overhead speakers.

From Pennsylvania, folks are traveling down to Dixie's sunny shores…

Even Perry Como was mocking him.

Top floor. A green arrow mounted atop a candy-striped pole pointed the way to Santa's Workshop, open 10:00 AM to 8:00 PM through Christmas Eve. To his left and right were labyrinths of children's clothing, and before him stretched endless aisles of toys.

Children clung to the hands of their parents, tugging them this way and that with wide, enchanted eyes. They were greedy in the purely innocent way that only young children could be, unburdened by patience or consequence or guilt.

Of course his wandering had brought him here.

A pang of desperate loneliness struck him, and he nearly turned around and headed for another, safer floor.

He hadn't been a father for over a century.

He would always be her father.

The contradiction struck him right between his ribs, where not so long ago a little knife had plunged into his heart.

He moved because he had to, because he was blocking traffic, and it was no good to be haunting the holiday crowd like a phantom. He knew what his destination would be, though he couldn't have said that he made a decision at all; rather, it was as if he was being carried by a force far more powerful than his own will, and he had no choice but to accept it as inevitable.

He wove through a menagerie of stuffed animals, rocking horses, and plastic tiaras. He passed by the fashion dolls with their improbably stylish careers and glittering collector's edition boxes; he ignored the toy infants that wailed so disconcertingly at the press of a button.

In a far corner, Louis finally found what he was searching for. A small assortment of porcelain dolls, tucked away inside cardboard and plastic, safe from uncautious grasping hands.

The little box seemed to weigh nothing at all.

Her hair was a cascade of perfect gold ringlets, of course. Her eyes were a clear blue, her eyelashes full and dark. She wore a red velvet dress, and her hat, scarf, and mittens were made of a soft white faux fur. Even her shoes were perfect, right down to the tiny gold buckles and the delicate lace stockings swallowed by her ruffled petticoat.

She blinked when you tilted her this way or that. That was a late nineteenth-century invention, the little weighted mechanism that allowed the lids to raise and lower. Claudia's dolls had never blinked, only stared forward, endlessly, year after year…

"There you are!" Lestat's voice shook him from his trance. "I ought to put a leash on you, you vagrant."

"I'm sorry," said Louis. "I thought I'd leave you to your audience."

"I was playing for you," Lestat said, plainly irritable, and more than a little bit hurt. "You had a front-row seat, why did you give it up? Sometimes I think you don't even…" He trailed off, attention caught by the box in Louis's arms. "What is that?"

Reflexively, Louis held the doll closer, but he knew no explanation would suffice. With a barely suppressed wince of shame, Louis offered her to Lestat.

Lestat stared at the little doll, stunned.

"You could have said something," Lestat muttered. "I would've come."

"I didn't plan on it. I was just…" Louis trailed off, punctuating his indecision with a weak shrug of his shoulders.

"I understand," said Lestat. And somehow it felt like he actually did, even though Louis hardly understood his own complicated heart.

"It's unusual to see porcelain dolls these days." Louis gazed wistfully at the box in his hands. "It makes sense, of course. Plastic is durable and inexpensive, and it stands up better to the ravages of childhood. But the artistry…"

"I know," said Lestat. "Those round, rosy hand-painted cheeks…"

"Something is lost in mass production, isn't it?" Louis smiled faintly and shook his head. "Ah, but how self-centered that is. The average mortal child doesn't mind."

Louis could almost imagine the things she would say about legions of dolls all produced by machine. Something sharp and bitter. Something only she could ever truly understand.

"Lestat," he said, his sudden desire giving voice to itself, "I want to give her away."

"What? To who?"

"I don't know," Louis admitted. He hadn't thought it through. It was a whim. "A children's charity. It's sentimental, I know, but just imagine it. You understand, don't you? The happiness a gift like this might bring some little girl who might have nothing else at all on Christmas Day."

"That is sentimental," said Lestat, "but I've grown to expect such things from you." He paused a moment, thinking, and then: "There's a church just a few blocks away, isn't there? They always have a place for things like this."

Louis could have wept with gratitude.

"Come on," said Lestat, taking Louis by the arm, "let's go have her gift wrapped. After all, presentation is everything! Well, almost everything…"

The line at the gift boxing kiosk was long, and there was less than half an hour to closing when they finally escaped out the front door and into the cold.

The startling chill came as a welcome relief. Snow was coming down hard, and the crowds had thinned dramatically. No more window shoppers or couples walking hand in hand, only unfortunate stragglers shuffling quickly toward taxis and covered bus stops. Even Louis had to squint against the persistent flurries.

Louis clutched his bag under his elbow and pressed close against Lestat's side, and Lestat's arm came around his shoulders as if it were the most natural place in all the world for it to be.

The church was closed. They had locked their doors at eight o'clock, over an hour ago.

Louis stared at the dim stained glass windows, feeling crushed and stupid for it. He had done all of this on a whim; if not for Lestat, he wouldn't have known this church was even here. So why did he feel like he'd failed?

He held the bag close to his chest, a heavy fog of misery rolling in and settling around him.

Lestat stood with his hands in his pockets a moment, regarding the stone building. It was a small cathedral, if it could even be called one at all, dwarfed by the city that had so obviously grown up around it. It seemed almost humble in spite of the neo-Gothic spires stretching darkly toward the sky.

"Oh look," said Lestat. He pushed the front door open. "Someone forgot to lock up."

Louis felt a swell of affection for him. He knew Lestat didn't like picking locks with that power he had — that for all its undeniable utility, it unsettled him to be something so far from human. But he had done it for Louis, and he'd hardly made a show of it at all.

Louis loved him with his entire heart.

Quick as a cat, Louis slipped in as Lestat held the door. The lock clicked quietly back into place behind them, and they reflected each other's smiles in the darkened vestibule.

Their target was easy to spot. Next to a bulletin board sat a bin wrapped in red and gold paper. Attached was an oversized gift tag that read Toy Donations in neat cursive lettering.

Carefully, Louis nestled his little parcel in amongst the other presents.

He felt Lestat's hand rest at his back again, that steady presence right between his shoulders that meant just as much as an embrace.

"I'd like to light a candle," Louis said, "if you don't mind."

The church was dark, but city light shone through the stained glass windows of the nave. The rows of polished wooden pews sat empty.

Lestat followed at his side, but only Louis's quiet footfalls echoed on the floor.

Beneath the statue of the Virgin was the altar with its rows of votive candles. Before Louis could so much as reach for his pocket, Lestat slipped a folded sheaf of bills into the slot in the donation box. He'd taken off his sunglasses and hooked the ear into the V of his coat, and the light from the candles flickered and danced in his radiant eyes. He wore an expression that seemed at once both distant and eerily focused.

If Louis said his name, would he respond? Had he gone away somewhere again?

Moving slowly, trancelike, Lestat took a long match from the table and lit it with a candle flame. He watched the little fire dance for a moment, and then, finally, he seemed to return from wherever he'd gone. He turned his attention to Louis, just the subtlest shift of his chin, but their eyes met, and Lestat was here with him.

Hand outstretched, Lestat offered the lit match to Louis.

Grief and love and relief. A tangle of thorns pressing painfully, beautifully, into his heart.

Their fingers brushed as Louis took the match, and he felt Lestat's quicksilver eyes follow him as he touched flame to wick. The candle flickered as it came to life, dancing wildly for one brief moment before falling into the same placid contemplation as its companions.

Louis shut his eyes and said a silent prayer for Claudia.

When he looked up again, he was startled to see Lestat trembling. His posture was rigid, as if he was tensed for a fight; his fists were clenched so tightly at his sides that Louis could see the tendons stand out on the back of his hand.

"Lestat?" His voice echoed in the silence of the church.

"There's no one there," said Lestat — oh, his voice was so soft and so strained — "I know there's nobody there, so why am I afraid to look?" His hand fluttered like a moth, and his fingers touched the socket of one eye, just below his brow. "Louis," he rasped, and dragged that hand sharply through his hair.

"I'm here," Louis told him. He took Lestat's arm, drawing close, setting his other hand between Lestat's shoulders the same way that Lestat had done for him.

Lestat tensed, then made himself relax, a deep shiver running through him once before he fully stilled. He was breathing in the most mechanical, unnatural way, and it shook Louis to the core to see his maker holding back his terror like a dam.

"Will you come outside with me?" asked Louis, in a gentle voice. "I'm finished here tonight."

Lestat nodded, badly concealing another tremor.

There was a side door toward the rear of the nave, concealed somewhat from view by a pair of wide pillars of stone. Louis turned the lock manually, and ushered them outside and into the dark and the cold.

It was no urban sidewalk they'd found themselves on, but a snow-covered courtyard. The sounds of the city were muffled by high brick walls; an artificial grotto stood in one corner, and all around were frozen fountains and dormant plants and statues of the saints.

They'd found a hidden prayer garden.

When the snow melted, the roses would bloom, and the grass on the ground would be green, and birds would come sing in the boughs of these manicured trees. And they would be long gone by then.

Lestat's heartbeat had slowed, almost but not quite returned to its regular pace. He seemed steadier now, more himself, though Louis wished desperately that he could say something to make it easier. Lestat so often took his compassion for pity.

Who had he thought he would see if he turned? Was it Claudia? Memnoch? Some other ghost out of his past?

No, Louis realized: Lestat was afraid of himself.

Somewhere in the distance, an ambulance wailed, grew distant, and vanished.

The courtyard was quiet again, except for the whisper of snow and two heartbeats.

"Thank you," said Louis at last. "I'm glad you came."

Lestat's face was obscured from view, tilted away and slightly up, as if he was looking at something far off in the distance, hidden by snow.

"So am I," Lestat said quietly. His tone was strange, distant and thoughtful in a way that made Louis feel as if Lestat deserved a moment's privacy.

Louis turned to amble down what might have been a little flagstone path in better weather, leaving the tracks of his boots in the snow. Let someone make of it what they would; it was a harmless intrusion, and Louis felt no guilt for it at all.

Shortly, he sensed Lestat following him, that old familiar presence at his back. He paused by the manmade grotto, trying to imagine what it might look like in summertime, lit up with candles, the flowers in bloom. Icicles hung from the stones now, and snow obscured the statue of the Virgin.

"I did it for myself. I know that, really." Louis slid his hands into his pockets, and looked across his shoulder at Lestat. "She would have had no sympathy at all for the gesture."

"She had no sympathy for anything," said Lestat. There was pride in his voice, and a smile at the corner of his mouth.

"Yes," Louis agreed. "You taught her that."

Lestat put his arm around Louis. He was quiet again, considering his words before he spoke, something which he very rarely did.

"She did love you, you know."

Louis hadn't realized he was breathing until quite suddenly he couldn't.

What must it have cost Lestat to say a thing like that?

They were so good at not talking about her. They'd gone years — centuries, really — without speaking her name to one another. A chasm lay between them where she'd been.

But who else had ever mourned for her? Their little girl, their Claudia, with a laugh like a clear golden bell.

"She loved us both, Lestat."

"Liar. You know damn well she hated me."

"Yes. But she loved you, too."

Louis caught the scent of blood just an instant before Lestat pulled him into a crushing hug. His arm gripped Louis's shoulders tight, those long, clever fingers making a mess of his hair.

Louis slid his arms around Lestat and held him, turning his face into the warmth of his wool coat and the safe sound of his heartbeat beneath it.

Lestat's breath hitched, and he stiffened. He was always ashamed of his tears. Louis neither pulled away nor tightened his embrace. No, better to pretend he couldn't hear, and spare Lestat's pride in this smallest of ways.

"You should hate me." Lestat's voice was muffled against Louis's shoulder, frayed and distressed. "You of all people…"

Louis's heart shattered.

"Oh, Lestat. Don't you know? You're the only creature in this world I've ever loved enough to hate."

Lestat made a strangled sort of sound, like he couldn't decide whether to laugh or sob or simply sink his fangs into Louis's throat.

He settled the matter at last when he pulled Louis into a kiss.

The scent of blood was impossible to ignore, fresh and close, absolutely intoxicating, and it was Lestat's. It pained Louis to see his tears, but he was grateful for them, too, and could he ever explain that to Lestat?

Ah, but this was heaven. Louis dared to taste the blood on Lestat's lips, a flash of golden summer on his tongue. Something deep inside him quickened — his blood recognizing its own? He shivered, his hand curling in Lestat's hair.

He kissed the blood trail on Lestat's left cheek, and held him close when he stiffened and drew in a breath.

"Shh," Louis whispered, stroking the nape of Lestat's neck above his scarf, that tender spot where hair met marble flesh. "Please. Let me take care of you."

For all Lestat's weeping, the blood trails were faint. Louis's coat had taken the worst of it, red tears blotted by black wool. What was left was a smudged mess that a handkerchief would undoubtedly make worse.

Louis took that blood into himself with slow, thorough kisses, brushes of lips and tongue against impossibly smooth skin. The gesture was entirely inhuman, some deep-rooted primal instinct that belonged more to a wild beast attending to its cub than to something that used to be a mortal man.

Lestat trembled.

He was doing his best to hold perfectly still, but little tremors shook him now and then, and his eyes were shut as if in deep and faintly painful contemplation. Louis could sense his distinct and unnatural absence of breath.

But Lestat's heart was pounding all the faster for the stillness, and Louis could not only hear it but feel the echo of it deep within his chest. Even his cheeks pulsed faintly, that staccato heartbeat blazing underneath each tender kiss. Louis's lips were made to feel that subtle flow of blood under the skin, and he was desperately aware of it now, with the last traces of Lestat's tears still singing silent hymns on his tongue.

He thought he heard Lestat say his name, once, before the stillness broke and he burst into glorious motion and kissed Louis's mouth again. The sound resonated deep inside Louis's chest like a bow drawn across the strings of an instrument, and Louis pressed himself against Lestat with an echoing hum of desire.

Louis's shoulders hit the brick wall of the courtyard with a painless thud; Lestat's hand in his hair cushioned the impact for his head. Lestat unknotted and untucked Louis's scarf so he could kiss his throat, and Louis tipped his head back, letting him claim those precious few inches of flesh.

He felt the desire for more whisper through him, the faint twinge of regret that they were out here in the cold instead of somewhere warm and intimate. Louis parted his legs, and Lestat pushed his strong thigh between them. With a hungry growl, Lestat licked at the vein in his throat, and Louis let out a harsh breath as his eyes fluttered shut.

Surrounded by silent statues of saints in prayer, Lestat remained the sole object of Louis's devotion.

Lestat's fangs grazed his throat without breaking the skin. "You haven't fed."

"Nor have you."

It had been several nights for both of them, Louis was sure. He could withstand the need for killing for a while, but he knew it would never really leave him. He craved the warmth and the brief sense of peace that it brought to his soul, and the guilt was as familiar as Lestat.

Carefully and deliberately, Louis untied the silk scarf from around Lestat's neck. He stroked two fingertips just beneath Lestat's jaw, and drew in a breath at the throb of his cold pulse beneath the skin. He kissed Lestat's throat, breathing in his familiar lack of scent, that telltale nothingness beneath his clothing and cologne and all the memories of the places that he'd been.

He could feel the tension in Lestat, how intensely he battled against himself, struggling with the urge to beg for what Louis intended to do.

A simple no would have destroyed him.

He opened his mouth to taste the faint blood-salt tang of Lestat's skin, and felt the twin press of fangs echoing at his throat. Lestat's groan rumbled deep in his chest, and Louis could feel his heartbeat absolutely everywhere: his face, his lips, his fingertips, the urgent press of Lestat's thigh.

And they shall be one flesh, Louis thought, as his fangs sank into Lestat's throat.

It was everything.

Lestat's blood flooded his mouth, as warm and gold as summer sun upon his skin. Somewhere far outside of himself, Louis felt bright pain give way to incomprehensible pleasure, and the strange, throbbing pull of his blood being drawn out of him. Lestat's heartbeat galloped through every inch of Louis's trembling body, carrying his essence through Lestat's veins and passing it back to him in long, thirsty mouthfuls that Louis swallowed like wine.

He felt a flood of love for everything that he had ever seen and known and hated in himself.

A brief eternity passed.

The swoon receded, and Louis was half of a pair once again.

He cut the tip of his tongue on his fang and put his blood against the little wounds he'd left. It didn't make much of a difference — Lestat, after all, would heal much faster than one of his poor mortal victims. But Louis liked to be tidy, and he hated the idea that Lestat might feel any pain.

A similar feeling, perhaps, to whatever it was that made Lestat right Louis's scarf for him, knotting it up smartly again and making sure the ends lay as they should. He brushed the snow from Louis's hair, smiling down at him, and Louis was sure he had the very same expression on his face.

"I hope that wasn't my Christmas gift, because I can't wait until next year to do it again."

Louis laughed silently. "No. That was something long overdue."

He took Lestat's hand, and they walked through the gathering snow toward the church door.

"Louis…"

They paused on the concrete steps beneath the overhang.

"Yes?"

"Earlier, when you said I didn't give you a choice. That isn't — look, I mean, obviously you can do whatever the hell you please and I've never been able to stop you, you're the most stubborn person I know, but I…" Lestat sighed sharply, dragging a hand through his hair. "Well, I'm asking now. What do you want?"

Louis shook his head, thoroughly flustered now that he was on the spot. "I meant what I said. I'll accompany you to New York, come what may."

"That isn't fair!" Lestat folded his arms across his chest and stepped sideways to block the way inside. "You have to tell me what you want. And don't lie, or I'll cry again. I will."

"Lestat! That's a terrible threat!"

"And what if I mean it? If wanting to be with someone was enough, we'd be happy by now." Lestat brushed Louis's hair out of his face. "Please. Louis. Be honest with me."

Louis fell quiet, attempting to gather his thoughts. He was so unused to wanting things that he could have. He reached down inside himself, deeper, to where he'd buried everything that wasn't please come back to me.

Louis shook his head, fidgeting anxiously with Lestat's velvet lapels. "I fear that if you go, you'll be torn in a half-dozen different directions. Armand will say something vicious to you, and you'll go off to wander the city by yourself, and I'll go to my coffin not knowing where you are or if you'll even be all right. Or you'll find some reason to go by St. Patrick's and make yourself miserable, or worse, something will actually happen to you there…"

"So you're worried about me?" Lestat tried to smirk, but his eyes told Louis that he'd caught him by surprise.

"Yes! Don't you know that by now?" Louis pressed himself against Lestat, turning his face against Lestat's cool cheek. "I suffer when you suffer. I worry for you endlessly. Trouble always finds you, and I can never keep you safe from it."

Lestat rubbed Louis's back in the manner of someone unaccustomed to being naturally comforting.

"You're always there, though, at the end of it."

Louis glowered at him. "Is that my fate? To be the one person who'll always be waiting for you?"

"And why not? You wear longing so well, mon ange." Lestat smiled humorlessly. "Besides, I think you love me more when I'm in mortal danger. You're quick to forgive when you think that you might never see me again. When things are peaceful, you find reasons to hate me."

"That isn't funny."

"It wasn't a joke."

"Isn't it? Then here is my serious answer, Lestat: you mythologize yourself. You think that I hate you for your flaws, but you refuse to accept that I could actually love you for them."

"You—" Lestat's eyes flashed silver. Louis had struck a nerve. "Damn it, Louis, you hypocritical pile of poorly-dressed contradictions, I could say that exact thing to you!"

He pushed Louis up against the door of the church and kissed him, hard and demanding and wonderful. It was a terrible habit, all of this kissing when they were meant to be having conversations, but it did mean that neither of them was inclined to storm off.

"There is one thing I need to know," said Lestat. He gave Louis's lip a little bite, and Louis shivered.

"What?"

"Did you believe it?" Lestat's gaze seemed to bore into the depths of Louis's soul, and he knew what Lestat meant before he clarified. "What I talked about in my book. My divine visitation, my journey through Heaven and Hell."

Snow fell on statues of saints.

"I believe you saw precisely what you claim to have seen," said Louis, conviction coloring his cheeks. "It wasn't my place to interpret the precise nature of your experience. But I do believe it happened as you said."

"No cynicism," mused Lestat. "I always thought eventually you'd ask. I assumed you of all people would want answers, after all your years of searching..."

"And do you have those answers?" Louis shook his head. "Is God indifferent to our suffering, or does He simply not exist at all? Would knowing one way or the other bring me peace?"

Lestat was astonished. "I don't understand. I was afraid you'd go into the sun like the others when you saw the Veil on the news…" His face fell. "I thought you would want proof like Armand did, that you only held back because you feared the power in my blood — and then I was afraid that you didn't believe it had happened at all."

"Is that what you thought?" Louis gave a sad shake of his head. "I don't need you to solve all the mysteries of Heaven and Hell. I love you just as you are. Just as you've always been."

Louis touched Lestat's cheek with curled fingers, gazing at him, adoring him for his impossible, unearthly brightness. He always seemed haloed, as if he carried his own light inside of him — and it had nothing at all to do with the ancient power in his blood, nor any preternatural thing about him. He was simply Lestat, the same Lestat he'd always known and loved, carrying the light of every candle Louis had ever contemplated.

"It was a mortal sin that brought you back to me. Is there divinity in that? But I did feel love that night, and it was yours."

Lestat dragged Louis into another crushing embrace, face buried against Louis's hair. "Don't ever leave me again," he demanded, voice threatening to break.

"Lestat," he warned, as gently as he could.

He had no desire to make a promise that he couldn't keep. They would part again, inevitably, because eternity was infinite and they had parted as many times as they had come back together.

"I know," Lestat said. He touched his forehead to Louis's, fingers knotted loosely in his hair. "Just don't go where I won't be able to find you."

Louis felt his heart break all over again.

He tried to imagine Lestat mourning him. He had often imagined himself to be so insignificant that it wouldn't have mattered for long, but he knew now that it wasn't so. Louis's death had shaken Lestat's soul free from another plane, and in return Lestat had dragged his spirit back from the abyss.

If that wasn't love, then love didn't exist.

"All right," Louis answered. "I promise you'll always have me, one way or another, whatever that's worth."

"I need you," said Lestat, showering Louis's face with kisses. His forehead, his eyelids, his cheekbones, his brows, the corners of his lips. "I don't say it enough, but I do. Who else would ever weep for me? Who else would mourn a monster like Lestat?"

"I wish you wouldn't make me," Louis whispered.

"I know, but one day I'm going to do it again."

"And I'll forgive you, of course."

Another kiss, both of them heedless of the snow falling all around them.

Lestat pressed his face to Louis's hair and inhaled deeply. Catching the scent of him, Louis realized with a tender little thrill, or whatever there was to him that hadn't been thoroughly soaked in Lestat's presence and his blood.

"You know," Lestat said, once they parted again, "you still haven't told me what you want."

"Haven't I?" Louis frowned so deeply he felt his brow crease. "I want your happiness. I want to know you'll return safely to me. I want—"

"Louis." Lestat kissed him quickly, and their noses brushed in a way that made Louis's heart thrill. "I'm asking what you want to do for Christmas."

"Oh." Louis felt his cheeks color. Why was it so much harder to say? Perhaps because he hardly understood it himself. His fingers flexed; he pressed his lips tightly together, and took a steadying breath.

"I want to spend Christmas in New Orleans with you. If you're asking. If—"

"Yes," said Lestat.

"Yes?" Louis gave a small, baffled shake of his head. "What do you mean, yes?"

"I mean I miss it, and so do you, so why not?"

"But you said—"

"I say all kinds of things I don't actually mean. I think we'll be safe from the Talamasca for a few nights, don't you? They wouldn't want to start a war on Christmas, it would be terrible PR." He grinned that devilish grin that made Louis so wonderfully, thrillingly nervous. "Perhaps I'll leave a few gifts at the motherhouse. Do you think they've been naughty or nice?"

"Lestat!"

"I'm joking, Louis. It's not my fault that you're so handsome when you're scandalized. It would make for quite the official report, though, you have to admit!"

"I refuse to admit anything of the sort," Louis said, biting the inside of his lip against the start of a smile.

"And anyway, I said I want that coat I left behind."

"So much for all your packing." Louis gave up on hiding his smile. Oh, how he had missed being able to laugh! "When shall we go?"

With a considering sound, Lestat looked skyward. "If we leave now, we can make it by midnight."

"Midnight? Tonight? You mean…"

"I hope you don't think we'll be driving."

"No, I was just thinking…" Louis tucked his hands against Lestat's lapels, where he could feel the steady beating of his heart. "That ought to give us time to visit Mojo."

It was raining when they finally touched down in New Orleans. The lights of the Quarter danced on the slick cobblestones, and greenery was everywhere — on walls and in windows, in bloom, and adorning the wrought-iron balconies they both loved so much. The humid air was cold but comforting.

Their first stop was Mojo, of course.

The old dog greeted Lestat like the long-lost friend he was, and Lestat wept with such unrestrained joy that Louis couldn't help but shed tears of his own.

The three of them wandered for hours, enjoying the dark and the damp and the December rain, appreciating all the simple things that human beings never, ever could. Louis was immensely grateful for Mojo that night — there were some secrets, he knew, that were too deep for Lestat to confide in anyone except a dog he'd befriended a decade ago.

Louis and Mojo weren't friends, but they did have that understanding between them. They both cared for Lestat in that same unconditional way that went deeper than words.

Lestat kissed Mojo's nose as he bid him good night. He told him he was very proud of him, and always had been, and promised he'd visit again.

With the solemnity of a handshake, Louis patted Mojo on the head.

They slept in their own home at dawn, curled up in Lestat's coffin with winter rain drumming above on the eaves. Tomorrow they would find the time to read A Christmas Carol, and Lestat would do voices to make Louis laugh. On Christmas Eve, they would see the river bonfires together for the first time in years. And in the furthest pews at Midnight Mass, Louis would slip his hand into Lestat's, as silent as a secret.

Neither of them needed anything more.