When he woke, he woke me, he said, "Why are you doing this?" in English, his voice quietened by sleep, "We were so happy," he said.

"No," I told him, very gently. "Non, c'est faux. C'est faux, vous." That's not true, you.

"But I love you," Laurent murmured, very sad, his body pressed against my back in his hotel bed. We had become twisted together in the duvet overnight, and now the sunlight filtered in a little, and the duvet looked very white to me, and bright to my eyes, and he could not see anything.

But even blind, he is knowing that it is me.

"Dasius, pity me, my face is hot. Close the curtains, I'm asking."

"Do you remember what happened?" I asked him, untangling myself from his limbs slowly to do what he asked. I set his arm aside gently, lifted his leg from my thigh and tucked it onto the mattress. His eyes were closed, but the flesh seemed raw. His hair I had washed with my own hands, and so it looked like it always looked after he had been rolling in bed.

"No," he said. "I got on a plane from Paris. I was looking for you, for my D, and I do not remember." His voice was thick, from the tightness in his throat against feeling.

Without looking out, I drew the curtains. At my office the evening previous, uncertain how to proceed, how to live a new life, I had asked Nicky what I should do, and he had told me to do what Laurent would want, because it was me who was different and not him. 

He liked clean sheets. He liked fresh flowers. He liked to sleep against my back. 

Oh what am I doing that I am crying now? I am missing him, and sorry to have caused him so much pain so close to his death. He never talked of it. I am feeling so much silence, these days, that he is not near me. I am feeling so much unsaid. And so I am writing this. I am feeling so much to tell him that I am sorry, even just so that he would not answer, and maybe cry with me so that I am not alone. He said, "Pity me, my face is hot," and I am in tears. What is it I am telling you? You do not need to know that, I feel. But I am feeling very much to say I am sorry. C'est tout.

Even just now, Marcellus was saying that what for am I doing this? He was saying that, come to bed. I fought with him, and he was saying to me, what Laurent did what he did to us, but I said to him, "If you are talking that way to me now, I will go to my office," and he said, "Go, go." I am upset with myself, that we are fighting. When we fight, everything about our house feels foreign to me. I felt compelled to go, and so I am sitting in my office now. It will be a few hours until he calls me, and says, "Come home, you're at the office so late," and I will hear that he loves me in his voice, but now I am feeling that my head is so heavy, and I wish Nicky is here. But, he is not wanting to leave the body in California, all the time, so he does not come.

You were wondering sometimes, Mini, why I am continuing to write, even though I know you cannot give me Laurent's writing. I think it's only that I need to write. You ask me, "Do you want to respond to Marcellus' tape?" and I said yes, and you were so surprised. But I miss him, that is all of it. I want to talk to you about him, because Marcellus feels against him so much venom. I can understand that, but he did little against us that he could do. You don't understand this? Even, later in life, he would sometimes come alone and visit us. I think that it is hard for Marcellus to remember that later part, because it is hard for him, too. The problem is that Laurent is his family also, but Marcellus has so much pain from early in his life. It is hard to have that much pain.

Dieu, aie piete de mon ame miserable.

Laurent's slender hand gestured for me to come back, but for a moment I didn't want to come, so he put it down again.

We had between us five hundred years. We did not need to speak. I knew why he had done what it was he did, and he knew of my knowledge. I knew that he was sorry, but could not have done otherwise, by the thickness of his voice. His patience, that was typical. Understand that. So often, we are telling stories of his passions, but he had such patience as well. He could be such a soft touch. We are telling such stories that are drama in our lives, because they are important to remember, but it is important to remember who he was as well. When he was not upset. When he was not unhappy. Passion makes of all of us fools, devils. It is transformative, and it makes the worst of us apparent. So much I do not want only for you therefore to hear the worst of him. For he was not his passions.

Certainly, sometimes he struggled against our familiarity. He struggled against my understanding of his motives, and therefore my inability to forgive him, and my being too honest to lie and say "Forgiven" for something that had never caused offense. But sometimes, like there in our hotel room, it was all he could do to put down his hand, and wait.

I stayed away a little while, sitting in a chair, until I heard, "David?" very quietly, and afraid.

"I'm here. Don't be frightened," I said as quietly.

"Will you leave me like this?" he asked me, so fearful.

"What do you think?" I asked.

"I am so afraid of the dark, David," he said, emotional. 

"Don't cry," I said, trying to be sweet to him. I heard him swallow against his raw throat.

I think he was trying to leave me alone, but he couldn't. After a few more minutes, I heard that fearful, "David?" again, and I closed the distance between us, tucking myself in under the blanket with him. It relieved him immediately, his tension sighing out of him as my nose touched his, and he felt safe again. 

"You hit your head a little," I told him. "Do you feel confused?"

"I feel a little confused," he said. "D, I was so certain of what I wanted to do. I was so certain that it was the only thing to do. It seemed so important to me."

"I know."

"But I only want you to stay with me."

"I know."

"D, teach him to be temperate. If anyone can do it, it will be you," and after a beat, "I only wanted to save him from a more terrible death. Do you understand?"

"But that is not all, Laurent."

"But that is some of it," he whispered, insistent. "D, I have been talking with my master, with Leechtin, and he is so guilty for making me, and I tell him that I begged for it. I did but he is so gloomsome."

"Gloomsome is not a word, Laurent."

"Gloomful."

"No."

"Don't yell at me."

"I'm not yelling at you. I understand what you're telling me. He does not beg for it."

"Yes but even so, whatever you are doing makes him different. You must consider whether it is kinder to let him live a natural life, short as it may be. Look what we do to each other, though we love each other most in the world."

I drew him closer to me, and felt his eyelashes against my cheek.

I secretly believe that it is a great shame that when his ancient, silent brother died, they had the body burned. What we could have done with those eyes. Surely, who can have a horror of an idea like that? 

"Oh, I am losing my mind," he said softly, as if discovering it, and accepting it.

I flattened my hand to stroke his soft hair and he smiled.

"You have always had the most love to give," he said. "If you find one who will take it, you will never let them go. I know it. But you allow it to abuse you. So it makes me afraid for you."

"When you go to sleep, tell me what you think of as you drift away."

"For me?" he wondered, perhaps feeling he owed me the memory, for what he had done. 

Though surely neither of us were innocent of wrongdoing. Of course he knew that I knew I had done wrong. I stroked his cheek with my fingertips, close to him in this way after a long time without, and he smiled a soft, sad smile.

"Is the window open? I smell fresh air," he asked.

"No, it's only that the air is on."

He kept quiet a moment, lips parted. "There are boys pouring wine and it smells of sugar, of jackfruit brought by the exotics, who fawn over me and say 'Let us have a taste of him', over goat cheese and fig. I am young but I still have memories, and fear those who ask this thing, and I am dizzy from unwatered wine given to me by mischief himself, Iovita, who plays serving boy with a ready plumpness of behind. I am five years old, and my legs hurt me to walk very much, and so always my cheek is pressed against my master's silk, who keeps me safe from silver. He says to them 'Not my Escha, but I will talk to you of other matters well and easily,' which makes them laugh because they think he is bedding me himself. But this lie is a beautiful lie, because it protects us both. I fall asleep in this drowsy feeling, with a sweet smell in my nose. That is what I think of."

"Nicky is coming with somethings for you, my darling," I whispered to him.

"I lost my head," he murmured. "I don't know what to do. How did this happen to me? I helped make the goat cheese and I looked into square-pupiled eyes."

"Go to sleep until Nicky comes."

"You will tell him that I love him, when he comes," he said.

"You will tell him yourself."

He made a sound of shivering, like the rubbing together of river reeds.

The peacefulness between us, after the previous evening, felt almost too much to bear, and once he fell asleep, I went into the adjoining suite and onto my knees to dry heave against the empty bed there. I had that lightheaded dread of having avoided death, of wary terror, that it would come still to claim me if I did not keep watch over myself. After I had vomited as much air as I could, I lay on the carpet, half under the bed, and cried nervously, my fingers working on nothing. 

I can't say that I have ever been happier in my life, to be anxious but alive, to be in such perfect trouble as in love and allowed to do with it what I wished. 

There was no indication at all that we were in anything but ordinary trouble, that is love and its torture. But soon and terribly, oh what stiffer punishment plotted against us. What more potent poison, that saw my Laurent vulnerable and chose that moment to begin making its way into his fragile heart.