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Post by Nicolas de Lenfent on Feb 25, 2009 16:19:14 GMT -5
Nicolas smiled again, running his hand through his hair without thinking about it, subdued and marveling at it, at the general pleasant nature of this moment. The room was no more quiet than it had been before - although for a short while it had, perhaps, been louder than usual; Nicolas was not quiet - and it took him a while to realize what he interpreted as stillness was really all on his part. There was an absence of chaos in his mind at the time, so it seemed. He wanted to prolong the moment, if it were at all possible.
Aurel's words took him by surprise, bringing him back to the present, which for once was not an unpleasant place to be. It seemed warmer than usual. It made him momentarily, as he watched the interplay of shadows on Aurel's face whenever the vampire turned his head, wonder how in the world they'd behave together in the future.
Then he recalled that he would be staying with Armand, not Aurel, and had really no reason ever to see Aurel again, which pained him suddenly, even to his absolute surprise.
"Would you do that?" he asked, not actually in acceptance although it was a way to accept, simply marvelling at the suggestion, wondering how honest it was, or wasn't. He leaned forward and readjusted where he sat, finishing rebuttoning the older vampire's shirt for him in a curiously thoughtful, almost affectionate way.
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Post by Aurel on Feb 28, 2009 7:35:06 GMT -5
"Of course I would", Aurel said, giving Nicolas a curious look as he started help Aurel buttoning his shirt. "It's not like Vincent will show up to claim any of them, and I have more than enough clothes to spare." he gave him an unconsciously sad smile.
Aurel eyed Nicolas, trying to figure whether his own clothes or Vincents' would fit better. "I'm guessing Vincent is about the same size as you. Please help yourself and take anything you like - you'll find clothes in his old room." he said and got up. Aurel held out his hand to Nicolas, to help him up. He too had realized that Nicolas hadn't showed up here to stay, and he was a little bothered by that thought. But there was nothing he could do - Nicolas was the type of person who did what he felt like.
Aurel grabbed Nicolas' hand and pulled him up from the floor. They stood close, oh, so close to eachother again. Aurel stared into Nicolas' eyes for a moment, then he looked down. "I guess you'd better get going. Wouldn't want to keep him waiting." Aurel mumbled.
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Post by Nicolas de Lenfent on Feb 28, 2009 18:49:28 GMT -5
Nicolas looked back at Aurel just as intently, and tilted his head to look into his eyes even after the other man had glanced away from him, as though he didn't realize Aurel was deliberately escaping his glance. He hadn't released his hand from when Aurel had helped him up, and it seemed so wonderfully confidential and warm to be touching him in this little fashion, which was very mortal in a way, and it seemed very normal for a vampire to be so excited and thrilled by it, covetous as vampires were of all mortal things.
And another thing was true in this, and that was that Nicolas had only had two kinds of lovers in his lifetime, the sort he hardly knew and forgot easily, and the sort he was friends with, or at least in confidence, and as he already knew Aurel, he obviously had to belong to the latter category, and Nicolas felt as though the encounter was incomplete. He felt so uncommonly warm and open, and the desire to express was strong. He did not move.
"Why wouldn't I?" he asked, seriously asking the question, not recognizing the statement for idiom. And he had not intended to go straight to Armand after telling Aurel he was leaving. He would be in a mausoleum a few more days, he figured, before he went to Armand again. After all, there were things he'd thought he'd like to do for Armand before then. "No, see here," he said, finally releasing his hand, and placing his hands on the other vampire's arms and clasping them, leaned forward to press a firm kiss to his mouth, which, while sensuous in light of their recent encounter, was familiar and more closely linked to friendship, and those old-fashioned, European ways of expressing it, than passion. And in order to kiss someone their face had to be tilted towards yours, and he imagined, when he pulled back, that Aurel's eyes would be on him once open simply because of that. "Not so long ago I would have been content to depart and vanish, perhaps to never see you again, except that sharing eternity makes the world smaller. But I can't, now, not now that I know you can be touched and will touch me." It seemed a strange word for communicate, but Nicolas was so powerfully wrapped in isolation that any touch meant a staggering amount to him. "Speak with me. You don't want to be alone tonight, either."
A guess, at most, for he didn't know this at all, but he suspected, keenly, that it was the case, and it was certainly true for him.
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Post by Aurel on Mar 1, 2009 7:01:35 GMT -5
Aurel grabbed Nicolas and held him tightly. It was true, he didn't want him to leave - at least not tonight. He sighed, yet again wondering what he was doing, where this would lead. Maybe the smartest thing to do was to ask him to leave after all. But he didn't want to.
"You're right", he breathed into Nicolas's hair. "I don't want to be alone tonight." He gently loosened his hold of him and took a little step away. "I really don't." For some reason he felt devastated. What was these feelings running through him? Why did he want Nicolas to stay? This was too much for him - he couldn't take these odd emotional changes all the time. He walked over to the chair he usually sat in while reading, and stopped to stare at it, as if wondering if he really wanted to sit down. He decided that he did want to, sat down, and looked up at Nicolas. "I don't know what I feel right now", he said quietly. The only explenation he could give for the moment. He didn't have any words to describe what he actually did feel.
Before he met Ciel, even before he met Vincent, he wouldn't care that much of anything. If this had happened then, he'd surely forced him to leave, as he'd done to any woman he had spent the night with but... This was all so new to him. He had never been with a man like this, he had never even thought of a man like that. But Nicolas seemed so different. Aurel didn't actually think of him as a man at all - he was just... Nicolas.
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Post by Nicolas de Lenfent on Mar 1, 2009 15:23:33 GMT -5
Nicolas warmed to Aurel so much, even more than he'd already been, at his admission to that. All right, so they were both alone, then? And they wanted each other at the moment, or at least the company. Nicolas wasn't going to scatter like seedfluff the moment the first breath of passion had waned, and Aurel wasn't about to toss him out like soiled linen, and even if that was the most they could either of them say, it would be enough.
And yet there was more than that to it, for they weren't simply staying wary and hostile, as they'd been not so long ago, before in a moment of cold-heartedness Nicolas had happened to touch him, and his resulting stillness had urged him to kiss him - well, Nicolas wasn't going to waste this chance. He looked around for the nearest chair, and dragged it towards the ornate, majestic desk with great ease, sitting in it very comfortably, folding his legs, and leaning forward with one elbow propped against the desk, fingers pushing through his hair, smiled back at Aurel almost curiously.
"All right, then. You want me here and I want you wanting me here - it's the most we could desire. I haven't wanted very much in so long, I almost don't know where to begin. But will you speak with me? I won't ask you anything of yourself if you don't wish it, but I feel I could tell you anything. Or do you want to speak of philosophy? Or music? Or of what we've just done?"
The air still seemed so warm.
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Post by Aurel on Mar 6, 2009 16:12:00 GMT -5
Aurel chuckled quietly. "If you have questions about me, ask them. I don't mind", he smiled. "We can speak of anything you like."
He felt a little better now that it was obvious that both of them didn't want to separate for the time being. That felt good.
He eyed Nicolas, still smiling slightly. "Is there anything you wonder?" he asked him.
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Post by Nicolas de Lenfent on Mar 6, 2009 16:22:43 GMT -5
Nicolas did not know how long this open mood would last. It was as though Aurel had opened up the doors to a large room Nicolas had for some time been lurking around outside of, and that he was now stepping in cautiously, knowing Aurel could at any moment grow cold and vicious about his being there and pushing him out again. Nonetheless, it was larger, and lovelier, and more welcoming than he'd imagined it could have been.
Nicolas did not realize how warmly he was smiling back, how trusting he looked.
"Very well. Yes, there is. Renaissance?" he asked, in a conversational, but almost respectful way. "Mm. Armand is Renaissance, you know," he said sort of distantly. "You don't make me think of Armand usually. I think you're rather his inverse. Armand is very cold, but he seems quite warm at first, just to look at him... whereas you have been the opposite." There was a lot of lingering warmth in his voice, wholly unconscious, as he spoke these last words.
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Post by Aurel on Mar 8, 2009 12:10:17 GMT -5
Aurel thought for a short moment. So Armand was his own age? How curious. He tried to remember how it had been back then. But all he could remember was violence and anger. He had started to hate everything, everyone... But he couldn't have forgotten everything, could he?
"To be honest with you, I can't remember that much of it", Aurel began, still trying to remember, "But I recall that I loved the art of that time... as well as the arcitecture. I have a weak spot for gothic desigs wich, for example, was used for cathedrals and such." He smiled slightly at the memory when he first started to hear of the cultural developement. What a renaissance indeed.
Aurel smiled apologetically "I was a little... too wild back then, to really care of the era I lived in, and appreciate the fine things of that time."
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Post by Nicolas de Lenfent on Mar 8, 2009 14:24:59 GMT -5
Nicolas nodded as he listened, folding his arms over the desk and leaning forward on them, not quite making himself look smaller, as he was not a slight little figure in the least, but giving him a guileless, vulnerable appearance as he looked back at Aurel. He hardly wanted to breathe, lest he interrupt the moment. He was being spoken to, being opened up to, being let in... and this was not a thing that very often happened to Nicolas. He valued it more than he could say.
After a moment, pondering all that he'd been told, he made a semi-intimate gesture towards himself, in a hand movement that was like beckoning Aurel towards him. "Les Lumieres," he said, the Enlightenment. "It is - was - then and now - thought of as a wonder, the great age of reasoning, when people no longer live in a superstitious age... For me it was like you had looked around at what you thought to be beautiful and welcoming scenery, your home, and to have someone tear it down like it was really just wallpaper. No belief in anything anymore..." His voice was somewhat faded, but it managed to convey a strong sense of his own hopelessness, his suffering. "I failed my exams at the Sorbonne and left school... I wanted to become a violinist, you see, but I was really too old to ever be any good, to be hired by any professional orchestra... Well..." He thought a little, rested his cheek against the back of his hand, eyes intense as they looked up at Aurel. He'd never told anyone this before - no one had ever cared, or not already known the story. Armand had known it from the first time he'd had his blood, as they all had, kidnapped him and forced him into that awful cage, near that pyre... "You know already of my disregard for life, my own life, anyone else's life."
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Post by Aurel on Mar 9, 2009 14:32:49 GMT -5
Aurel nodded. "Yes, I know that... But I had no clue you are a violinist." he said. How suiting for him though. Nicolas playing the violin would certainly be a delightful experience, both for ears and eyes.
"Oh, those old fools at the professional orchestras ... they think they are the experts of everything. Who's to say if you are too young or too old? What does age really matter? It's not like you were so old you were unable to move your fingers, right?" he said nonchalantly, and made an irritated gesture with his hand.
"Though I doubt that you failing exams and not being hired by an professional orchestra are the only things that made you feel that way of life. Or am I wrong?" Aurel asked and met Nicolas' eyes.
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Post by Nicolas de Lenfent on Mar 9, 2009 19:49:55 GMT -5
Nicolas smiled wryly up at Aurel, finding he reminded him very strongly of... well, he wasn't about to dwell on it. It would only have made him eventually bitter, and rather hateful. And he had an air of authority that had never been Lestat's. Lestat was a leader, oh, yes, but had always assumed the pose of the young and irresponsible leader, which was not the same thing.
"Well, when you pick up an instrument, if you are twenty when you start, as I was, instead of eight, there are some things you will never learn to do with as much precision, and therefore you will never be as good, and therefore you will never be hired," said Nicolas, as though this were easier to speak of now that it had been a century. It was not. "But I knew that I when I started. I would have sold my soul to learn it..."
His voice faded into a kind of haunted tone, as memories crowded around his mind, making him look vague and vulnerable. "I suppose... there were other things," he admitted, after a moment, voice very soft. "But they were all part of the same thing. A sense of isolation... as though nothing I did mattered, or that I couldn't touch anyone... I couldn't be admitted into a decent orchestra, I couldn't make an impression upon anyone I knew. I might not have existed..."
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Post by Aurel on Mar 19, 2009 15:15:03 GMT -5
Aurel sighed. He couldn't honestly say he knew what Nicolas felt, but he sympathized with him. This was no easy thing for Nicolas to talk about it seemed, and Aurel wasn't sure what to say to comfort him. Alas, he walked over to Nicolas, and laid his hand on his head and patted him gently. It wasn't meant to be a superiour action, he mainly did it trying to be kind.
"I might not make you feel better at all, but..." Aurel began. "...You sure made a great impression on me when I first met you. And I'm sure that you've done the same while meeting many others. So screw those humans. What do they know anyway? They're just arrogant food."
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Post by Nicolas de Lenfent on Mar 20, 2009 13:01:41 GMT -5
Nicolas looked at Aurel curiously, tilting his head, a certain slight tension in his shoulders. Not due to hostility, of course; simply, it was that he did not quite want to give in to the desire to show some kind of warmth. He did not want to get caught up in it. But it was easily read into his behavior, as he shifted position where he sat and just barely allowed himself to smile.
"Well, in their defence," said Nicolas, unconsciously pulling his hand up and tracing his fingers over the back of Aurel's, as though trying to absorb the details of it. "I was one too, at the time. Weren't we all, once?"
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Post by Aurel on Mar 21, 2009 8:01:47 GMT -5
Well, he couldn't argue about that. It was only that he couldn't remember his life as a human too well anymore.
"You're right", Aurel mumbled. "I can't recall those days though. However, they can't have been that good since I don't remember them. Plus, I was nearly insane my first time as a vampire... maybe I repressed those memories."
He had tried to remember who he was as a human, if he had a family (after all, he was in his thirties when he became a vampire), and if he loved that life. But he couldn't remember anything.
"I know it might be hard to let all of the painful memories go... but might it not be better to do so sometimes? At least try...? Obsessing about the past isn't good for anyone. Sooner or later, people got to break free from whatever is holding them down."
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Post by Nicolas de Lenfent on Mar 21, 2009 12:30:02 GMT -5
Nicolas looked at Aurel still more curiously, wondering if he spoke this way because he had moved beyond his memories. From all that he had said to Nicolas, he would have gotten the impression that he was still trying, and very frequently failing. Not long ago they had spoken on the subject of Love, and in response to something Nicolas had said very thoughtlessly, Aurel had thrown him up against the wall. No, he supposed he spoke from experience, knowing what sort of pain you got into from remaining in the past.
Tentatively, Nicolas stroked his hand, then rested his own over it, having no illusions that Aurel's warmth towards him would necessarily last if Nicolas said another stupid thing.
"Why did the vampire who made you a vampire... do it?" he asked him.
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