Chapter Text
They don’t talk about it.
Nandor spends a couple of nights avoiding him before pretending everything is just as it always was. The novelty of them supposedly being in a relationship wears off very quickly and their housemates don’t bother with them any more aside from the occasional comment here or there, most of which are silenced by Nandor’s hisses and demands for privacy. Only Colin’s eyes glow blue gleefully sometimes when he’s alone in a room with them, probably feeding off the tension there.
But, they don’t talk about it.
Nandor and Laszlo get abducted by witches one night. Nadja makes an angry comment that if Laszlo can mistake Nandor for her, then she can just as easily mistake Guillermo for Laszlo and have sex with him - something Nandor loudly objects to. His exact words are: “No one is allowed to have sex with Guillermo until he becomes my wife!”
"Your wife?" Guillermo squeaks into the shocked silence in the room.
"WE'LL TALK ABOUT IT LATER."
He doesn't even look in Guillermo's general direction for the rest of the night. They don’t talk about it.
They get an invitation to attend the Nouveau Théâtre de Vampires one night while Guillermo takes a few days off to help his mother, who had sprained her ankle. An obvious trap, set up by the Vampiric Council that Guillermo figures out too late, and the vampires don’t realize it’s a trap at all. He follows them and saves them just in time, killing most New York vampires in the process. More importantly, he lets the cat out of the bag that he is a Van Helsing descendant, much to Nadja and Laszlo’s outrage.
“And you! You horny little shit, you are fucking him and you never even thought to check if he is a fucking vampire killer?!” Nadja turns to Nandor.
“Well I –”
“Actually, he was just –”
“I don’t bloody care, he could have killed you while you were fucking? Did you think about that? If this how you want to go out, Nandor the fucking Horny!”
“Noo, I don’t!” Nandor declared. “Which is why, effective immediately Guillermo, we are no longer in a fa– err, in a fucking little relationship! Sexy times are over now.”
They share a look at that. Guillermo is honestly just fighting the urge to roll his eyes at him, but softens when he sees something … apologetic, in Nandor’s expression. Something a little unsure, as if to ask if they are okay now.
“Alright,” he says with a sigh and nods. Offers a tiny hint of a smile to reassure him. Nandor offers back a small, satisfied smile of his own. Friends again. Things can go back to normal. Well, as normal as they can be, with them appointing him as their bodyguard and trying to hypnotize him into never harming them (a futile task, as he has built an immunity to vampire hypnosis years ago).
So, they don’t even have to talk about that one big thing that happened. And it’s fine. Perfectly fine.
“How do you know about that?!” Nandor yells at the documentary crew.
“Uh, we were in the room when it happened? We have it on tape,” one of the producers chuckles nervously. Nandor immediately stands up and waves his fingers in their general direction.
“You will forget that you ever witnessed me trying to kiss Guillermo while drunk from alcohol blood,” he drawls over them. “You will also have no memory of him rejecting me which is very embarrassing for a vampire such as myself. Also, that bump in the drawer by the front door has been made by a visiting Babadook and you will tell Nadja this if she ever asks about it.”
“Oh, things are definitely not back to normal,” Colin Robinson tells the documentary crew. “In fact, if I may be so bold, things are even more tense than before. I don’t know what actually happened between Nandor and Guillermo, but hoo boy! I am eating good. Especially because of Nandor. I really think he’s trying to avoid being alone with Guillermo as much as possible. Even made some truly astoundingly bad attempts at dating. I mean, hitting on a lesbian and rekindling an old flame with commitment issues over the span of two weeks?”
He laughs gleefully.
“The nervous energy coming off him is like nothing I’ve seen before, truly. Then, combining it with Guillermo who is trying not to be jealous and-slash-or heartbroken whenever he latches onto somebody new? This is, as the kids say, la crème de la crème,” he tells them. “Say, you guys have your cameras directed at us the whole time. You wouldn’t happen to know the reason behind them acting so crazy, would you?”
The documentary crew gives him clueless shrugs in return.
“Well, okay then, keep me guessing,” Colin Robinson laughs. “I’m enjoying it either way. It’s like a guilty pleasure telenovela for me. And I’ve seen lots of telenovelas in my day. I’ve seen Esmeralda, La Reina del sur - that one’s a doozy -, and I can’t forget Pampa Ilusión, a true Chilean classic from 2001. The kicker is, it's set in the nineteen thirties …”
“We are now, wait for it, the bloody heads of the local Vampiric Council! Aah!” Nadja squeels excitedly at the camera as they all walk down a dark corridor. “Or, I guess, me and Nandor are, since Colin Robinson and my darling husband can’t be fucked to participate. The Guide directed them to the library, Laszlo was raving about their extensive porn collection he wanted to check out. But it’s fine, I guess. I’m just so happy we have that little bundle of van Helsing blood as our bodyguard, because that makes us the most powerful group of vampires in the area.”
“You know, I’d love it if you stopped calling me that,” Guillermo says over his shoulder. “Isn’t it easier to just say Guillermo?”
“Yeah, yeah, whatever.”
“You let him talk to you like this?” the Guide asks from the front of the group. “I’ve seen familiars get killed for less.”
“Hey, hey, Guillermo is not our familiar anymore. As Nadja said, he is our bodyguard,” Nandor corrects her.
“Well, familiar or not,” the Guide says as she stops by a random door. She opens it to reveal a small empty rectangular room with a bucket in the corner. “This is as far as he goes. You’ll have to forgive me the modest interior design, it is primarily used for familiars. It’s for protection so they don’t get accidentally eaten by Council members. They get snacky when they give out sentences. But we can add a chair or something?”
“Well, you heard her Guillermo. In you go. It’s for your own protection.”
“Uh, I don’t really need protection though,” Guillermo pushes back. He uncovers his jacket to reveal two wooden stakes attached to his belt. “Van Helsing blood, remember?”
“It’s tough to forget, it smells delicious,” the Guide grins wickedly and boops his nose. “You look good enough to eat. But unfortunately, most other Council members will think the same and we can’t afford to lose any more. Because they will try to suck you right through your dick, especially with that sweet, sweet virginal aroma. It’s just too alluring to resist.”
“Oh, Guillermo is not a virgin,” Nadja says with a wave of her hand. “Nandor made quite sure of that, didn’t you Nandor?”
Nandor hesitates with his answer for a second too long and Guillermo looks to the ground awkwardly, pushing his glasses up his nose just to have something to do with his hands. Nadja looks between the two of them suspiciously. Then she takes a whiff. And another one, closer to Guillermo.
“Wait a bloody second! This baby sack of Van Helsing blood is still a virgin!” she shrieks. “Weren’t you two making a big stupid deal about fucking like rabbits just a couple of years ago?”
“It’s only been three weeks, actually–”
“Us?! You guys were the ones making a big stupid deal about it!” Nandor yells back immediately, his voice drowning out Guillermo’s input. “And we only did hand stuff, okay?!”
“No, nono, no we didn’t,” Guillermo interrupts them both by raising his hand. He puts his hand on Nandor’s arm to stop him. He pulls the arm away as if he's been burned. Okay. “It’s fine, Nandor, the secret’s out anyway. Nadja, we were never together. Nandor just knew about me being a vampire killer and was covering for me so you wouldn’t find out. You guys mistakenly interpreted that as us trying to hide a secret relationship from you, and we thought this was as good cover as any, so we let you believe it.”
Nadja listens to him with a blank expression. Looks at Nandor, then back at him, then back at Nandor again.
“YOU KNEW HE WAS A VAMPIRE KILLER FOR YEARS AND DIDN’T TELL US?”
“Again, three wee–”
“I WAS TRYING TO PROTECT HIM WHILE HE WAS PROTECTING US. WARRIOR’S HONOUR!”
“I DON’T CARE ABOUT YOUR STUPID HONOUR OF THE WARRIORS, YOU FUCKED UP DONKEY’S ASSHOLE –”
As they continue yelling profanities at each other, the Guide turns to Guillermo.
“So, do you want the wraiths to bring you a chair, or …”
Guillermo sighs.
“Yes, please. Can you maybe ask them to clean up the bucket, too?”
“Oh, no, Nandor and I never really talked about what happened between us,” Guillermo tells the part of the documentary crew that stayed behind with him in the room for familiars. “I don’t really think we have to, really. I mean, we just made the best of a silly misunderstanding. It’s a pretty usual thing to happen around the house, as I’m sure you’ve noticed by now. It’s not like, there were any actual, um, feelings involved.”
“There weren’t?” one of the camera guys can't help but ask. Guillermo’s cheeks flush in a deeper shade of red.
“Well, uh, I-I don’t,” he stumbles over his answer, then clears his throat. “Okay, uh, so. Maybe I did have the tiniest crush on Nandor – but that was a long, long while ago. There’s nothing there, though, not anymore. But yes, maybe the whole fake relationship sort of stirred them up and made me a little confused, but I got over it. So over it. We’re just friends. And yeah, sure, that almost kiss we shared when he came home drunk a few weeks ago made me briefly consider something might happen between us, but by the way he stormed out of there and then refused to talk about it made it clear to me it was just a drunken mistake on his – huh? What do you mean, what almost kiss? That night, right after we started pretending to be a couple. When he came home while everyone else was out and it looked like he was about to kiss me in the living room? Nothing?”
The documentary crew give him apologetic shrugs in response.
“But you were there! How do you not remember? Unless he– never mind,” Guillermo pinched the bridge of his nose. “I hope he at least remembered to make you delete the footage, too. I’m done talking about it anyway.”